Iteration
by Viola
Summary: An AU in which loose lips sink ships, Thrawn has a very good day, Wedge has a very bad day, popular characters die, popular pairings get twisted, unpopular pairings happen, slash happens, the galaxy does not get saved & Karrde has a lot to be upset about.
1. Shift

**Title:** Iteration

**Fandom:** Star Wars Expanded Universe

**Characters: **Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, Luke Skywalker, Aves, Wedge Antilles, Garm Bel Iblis, Han Solo, Thrawn, Pellaeon, Original Characters

**Rating:** Mature

**Warnings:** Oh, warnings for pretty much every last damned thing - major character death(s), language, violence, het, slash, threesomes, abuse of chaos theory by a non-mathematician, and probably a few other things I've forgotten.

**Notes:** After nearly ten years of on-and-off tinkering, I finally just stripped this thing down to the studs and essentially started over. So if you read the first few parts of this on FFN, lo these many years ago, this is all new and revamped – albeit based on the same basic concept.

**Summary:** An alternate universe in which loose lips sink ships, Thrawn has a very good day, Wedge Antilles has a very bad day, popular characters die, popular pairings get twisted beyond all recognition, unpopular pairings happen, slash happens, minor characters develop actual personalities, the galaxy does not get saved for once and Talon Karrde has a lot to be upset about. (AU starting sometime during _Dark Force Rising_, if not before.)

**Iteration  
**

_"Where were you anyway? Your last message said you'd be back three days ago."_

"_That was before I got stuck on-" Luke broke off, eyeing the people beginning to wander through the corridor. "I'll tell you later," he amended._

_-Timothy Zahn, The Last Command  
_

"_A tiny imprecision in the initial conditions will grow at an enormous rate. Two nearly indistinguishable sets of initial conditions for the same system will result in two final situations that differ greatly from each other."_

_- Chaos Theory and Fractals  
_

**1. Shift**

Maybe, just maybe, Karrde was right about her, after all.

She was lost, had been since she could remember. There wasn't much chance of saving her, of salvaging anything of value when this was all over.

He was looking at her, though, in the low eerie light of that place, the air heavy with thousands of quiet breaths, like maybe he wanted to try.

"I'm a bad bet," she said softly, and he reacted in that way of his, never showing much, never wanting to be seen as weak or surprised or even really human. He'd called her cold once and she'd called him a hypocrite, and they were both right. She knew him well enough, though, to interpret that little twitch of his head, the not-quite raise of an eyebrow. She'd managed to surprise him. She moved closer, so they were shoulder to shoulder, looking down into the cavern and its endless rows of tiny circles within circles – forever and forever and forever.

"I'm a bad bet," she said again, "and I'm sorry."

"Mara..." he began and faltered, looking, for the first time since she'd known him, at a loss for words.

She'd needed something, someone, to hang onto. She thought he'd be the safe choice, that there would be less danger of any serious entanglement. She'd used him, body and breath, to keep herself grounded, to keep from spinning off into the void, and he'd pretended not to mind. She owed him for that. She owed him for a lot of things, truth be told – and if there was ever a time for truth-telling it was now. He'd saved her life, though she'd repaid him for that several times over. He'd given her a home and power and a purpose – and he was right about her, he'd filled a void, one that she hadn't really wanted to admit to.

"What are we going to do?" Karrde said. It was her turn to be surprised, until she realized that he was speaking, not to her, but over her shoulder to where Luke had reappeared from the shadows.

"He's down there somewhere, and I can't get Han or Lando on the comm." Luke grimaced, flexing his fingers and looking down at the cavern as well, searching maybe for C'baoth's presence among the thousands of clones. Mara shivered. She couldn't sense much herself, but what she could feel was unpleasant, fractured, unnatural.

"So no idea then? No cunning Jedi plan?" Karrde was back to his usual form, the moment for honesty gone. They probably wouldn't get another chance.

"I don't suppose you have a way out of this up your sleeve? No? Then shut up and let me think."

The bickering was, she knew, mostly for show. They were both rattled, something that, before now, she would have laid even odds she'd never see. They'd retreated up here to hide, to regroup – only the rest of the group had yet to materialize. She still wasn't much good at sensing individual emotions, but she could feel a general buzz of worry – from Luke, for his sister, her husband, his friends; from Karrde, for his people and, rather appropriately, for himself – and, worryingly, from both of them for her. The strength of it was almost more than she could take. She stepped back, away from them both, closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing.

"Are you all right?" Luke asked, coming over and putting a hand on the back of her neck. The touch was intimate, too familiar. She just barely resisted reflex, the urge to cringe, to shake him off. Every time he looked at her she felt it – this alien thing, hers but not hers. She recognized it for what is was now, mostly, was able to untangle it from the other things she felt when he looked at her. Hope – it was mostly hope underneath the rage and resentment that was only a little bit her own. There were other things there, too, unformed and dangerous, but she didn't have the luxury of looking at them too closely.

Maybe it was better that way, for all of them.

"I know this is hard," he was saying. "It's hard for me, too..." He touched her again, and she saw it in a sudden flash – a future where Luke killed C'baoth with his own hands, and it all went horribly, horribly wrong. She'd never been all that inclined toward visions while waking (dreams, of course, were a different story), not even with the Emperor's guidance, so it took her a moment to recognize it for what it was: a possible future, a likely one – unless she did something to stop it.

So, she decided, she'd just have to stop it. It was better than hiding up here, at any rate.

She ran through the possible options, quickly discarding most of them. Her breathing must have changed, or the tension in her shoulders, or the tilt of her head, or any one of a thousand tiny intimate things that gave her away.

"What is it?" Karrde asked.

"Nothing. I just-"

"Felt something?" Luke was still by her side, standing too close to her, and again she had to suppress that not-hers urge to flinch away. Instead, she shifted her weight forward, gauging the distance, took a breath and tried to steady herself. "It's all right," he said, his hand gentle on her wrist, mistaking her hesitation for fear. He should have known better, should have been able to tell what was really going on in her mind. She looked at him again, trying to read what was happening beneath the surface, but it was too hard find the thread of his thoughts in all the background noise and sensation. Maybe she was closed off to him the same way here.

Karrde, though, knew her well enough to guess what she was really about to do. He was watching her with this look on his face that… No, definitely not the safer choice. Her throat closed abruptly, and she had to look away from him.

"It's all right," Luke said again.

_It's not_, she thought. _It's not, but it will be._

When she looked up again, Karrde was still watching her, shaking his head just fractionally, speaking volumes without saying a word.

_Don't do this. You don't have to do this._

He was wrong – he didn't like being wrong; she was going to miss that about him – she had to do it. It was why she'd been brought here – it was fate, destiny, whatever you wanted to call it. It was the whole point. After everything she'd done, had been used to do, it was the only ending she could imagine.

Luke looked from one to the other of them, catching on belatedly. "Wait a minute..."

"It is all right," she said, looking him in the eye. Oh, speaking of danger... Maybe it would have gone that way with either of them, or both, no matter what. Maybe it already had. "It's all right, and I think it's the only way..."

"What is?" Now he was just being deliberately slow, playing for time to change her mind.

"This," she said, "and you know it."

She pushed away from him, abruptly, jumping the balcony railing and pausing there for just a fraction of a second. The cavern fell away below her and she could feel in that moment exactly where C'baoth was, down there in the darkness and the din.

She let go.

They both reached for her, two pairs of hands trying to keep her there, to hold her back, but it was too late. She stepped forward into nothingness, closed her eyes, and let the darkness take her.


	2. First Iteration

**2. First Iteration**

The _Starry Ice_ dropped abruptly out of hyperspace, venting coolant and atmo into silent space.

Inside it was bedlam. Alarms screamed, punctuated by the grim sound of bulkhead doors slamming shut. What should have been a pretty standard pick-up job had gone straight to hell in near-record time.

"Get everybody out of the danger zone right now. No heroics..." Aves was saying into the intercom, while beside him Nadal was reading off each potential heading their pursuers might appear from at any second. "And make sure that section stays sealed."

"Well," Nadal said, checking off the last of the approach vectors and switching to the nav computer, "that could have gone better."

"Not really the time for humor..." Aves said, looking around for the nearest person who wasn't engaged in something totally critical to their survival. There weren't many choices. "Ellie! Get on the emergency channel. Tell anyone who can hear us to get their asses out here asap."

"Just whistling past the graveyard, boss," Nadal said, moving over so Ellie could reach the long-range comm.

"Don't call me 'boss.' I am not the boss..."

"Better you than me – today, at least."

In the background, he could hear Ellie, trying not to sound scared, calling for help. "I repeat: we have experienced a hull breach and require assistance. Our position is…"

"Somebody give me some good news already..."

"We've sealed off the breach. It should hold until we get somewhere we can put down and make repairs – but only if we go now."

"I'll take it," Aves said, feeling a little bit better about their chances at any rate.

But then abruptly the alarms, which had just finally fallen silent, roared to life again.

"We have multiple contacts- They dropped out of hyperspace right behind us." Nadal lowered his voice. "Aves, even with the hull breach temporarily contained, we're not going anywhere. We have almost zero maneuverability in sub-light right now, and not enough time to finish calculating the jump before they reach us."

"Keep the calculations running, just in case. They might get called away for something bigger than us," he said, sending out a silent prayer to whoever or whatever might be looking out for a guy like him for a sudden Imperial attack in this sector. Then said, "I don't suppose there's any chance they're friendly?"

Nadal gave him a look that spoke eloquently to the chances of that, and flicked the comm to speaker, "Freighter 57213, this is the Republic Cruiser _Undaunted_. You will cease all activities and prepare to be boarded."

"I guess that answers that question." He turned to Silas. "Dump it, all of it – and make sure Tally wipes the drives of anything that could leave a trail back to Karrde. There shouldn't be anything but check it anyway – twice."

"This way we keep breathing?" Nadal said, apparently trying for the bright side.

"_Maybe_ we keep breathing. Get on the comm; tell them we're in need of their assistance. Maybe they'll buy it."

"Yeah, maybe." Nadal switched the comm over to his earpiece to block out any potentially incriminating background noise. "We read you, _Undaunted,_" he said._ "_We are officially requesting your assistance. We've taken damage and may require evac…"

"Give it a rest, Ellie." Aves turned and shooed her away from the long-range comm, then keyed for the ship-wide intercom. "I'm pretty sure everybody's figured it out by now, but we're about to be boarded and searched by the Repubs. Keep your heads, don't do anything stupid and we'll all walk out of this just fine..."

The ship lurched as the cruiser locked onto them, the telltale clang of metal on metal echoing against their hull. The seals on the aft emergency hatch began to pop, one by one.

"Should we go open the door for them?" Nadal asked quietly.

"Why make it easy? Besides, it seems like a real good way to get somebody shot. I say we all just sit tight and let them come to us."

After a long moment where everyone seemed to be holding their breath, a squad of troopers stormed in, blasters at the ready and lights blaring. "Easy, everybody," Aves said, and was proud to see that everyone was following orders to the letter.

The guy on point swiveled toward Aves, shining the light directly in his eyes. _Really?_ Aves thought. It was lit up like high noon on the bridge, even without the lights. _Great, we've got ourselves a bunch of hotshots._

"Identify yourself, and your vessel."

"I thought my associate already took care of that for you, but… I'm Captain Halsey," he lied easily. "This is the _Alliance Pride_, out of Corellia. My crew and I are happy to comply with whatever you..."

"Sit down and put your hands behind your back."

_Yup, definitely a bunch of hotshots._

Aves stayed on his feet. "Are we being accused of something specific?"

"Sit your ass down, and put your hands behind your back now!"

Aves and Nadal exchanged a look, and both put their hands up in surrender. "Do like they say, everyone," Aves said. "Nice and easy. We don't want any trouble."

One of the Republic troopers was getting way too handsy with little Ellie, who was all of seventeen and posed about as much of a threat as a baby Ewok.

"Hey! Easy," he said, and got a blaster butt to the ribs for his trouble. "Maybe if you could just tell us what you're looking for...?" he said, once he'd got his breath back.

"Like you don't know. Kind of hard to play innocent when you've got a hole roughly the size of a turbolaser blast in your hull." The trooper pulled Aves's hands behind his back and slapped on a pair of binders.

"This must be some sort of mistake. We were hit by space debris and dropped out of lightspeed to make repairs."

"Yeah, you just keep sticking to that story. Maybe somebody will believe it."

The trooper forced him to a seated position, back against the wall. He looked over the crew, _his _crew, all bound and lined up to be processed.

"Well, shit."

* * *

Aves had seen the inside of a lot of jails in his day. He probably should have been more ashamed of that fact than he was. This particular jail wasn't all that remarkable – he'd been in better ones, and he'd definitely been in worse.

The capital city on Jeldwen wasn't all that remarkable either – a largish city on a mid-sized and relatively affluent planet. The whole planet was fairly unremarkable, except for being just this side of Imperial space, and even then the Republic presence was usually fairly low-key. There was a base in the system, keeping watch on whatever Grand Admiral Thrawn might have up his sleeve next, but the Republic forces had generally – up to this point – left local matters to the locals. That was, after all, why they'd chosen this place for the pick-up. The fact that there were a few vaguely friendly fringe groups hanging around the edges of the system was a nice bonus, too. They all occasionally helped each other out or threw extra work in the direction of someone who needed it. Karrde had called it 'co-opetition' which Aves thought sounded ridiculous, but in practice was actually pretty damned helpful.

Something, though, he thought, watching through the tiny square window in the cell door, had shifted here. The Repubs were everywhere in the city, including here at the detention center, and the local law enforcement didn't look particularly thrilled about it.

"Something's up," he said out loud, and Nadal, the cell's other occupant raised an eyebrow.

"Gee, you figure?"

"Just thinking out loud, funny man."

"Thinking?" Nadal grinned at him. "This is a banner day."

Aves ignored him. "You see where they took Ellie?" He knew he shouldn't worry about the welfare of one member of the crew above the others, but... Hell, she was just a kid and the only female, and he was kind of an old-fashioned guy that way.

"Relax. I saw a bunch of fearsome-looking female officers hauling her off somewhere. Not the company I'd personally choose, but better than the alternative."

"Okay, good," he said, feeling slightly better. He lay down on a cot shoved against the wall of the cell.

"So, any brilliant plans for getting us out of this?"

"Brilliant plans are the boss's department, not mine..."

"Yeah, well, the boss ain't here," Nadal said, sitting down on the cell's other cot and looking at him expectantly.

"I'm _thinking._"

"The _Alliance Pride_?" Nadal said finally, after a long, very empty, pause. "Really? We thought they were going to buy that?"

Aves shrugged. "All the cover IDs in Republic sectors are ass-kissy patriotic names like that. I think it's Ghent's idea of a joke. At least this time we weren't the _Spirit of Alderaan_." He paused, considering. "It works more often than it should, actually."

The door to their cell opened abruptly, revealing a Republic officer with a worrying amount of fruit salad on his uniform, marking him a full commander at least – though Aves had to admit he had more trouble figuring out the Repubs' ranks and uniforms than he did with the Imperials. The Imperials were, at least, nothing if not consistent. Half the time, the Republic appeared to just be making it up as they went. That said, though, a commander – or above – definitely meant trouble. The higher they got kicked up the food chain, the more likely it was someone would tumble to who they really were.

"Regs say that you get one call, Captain Halsey," the officer said, his tone making it clear he didn't believe for an instant that was Aves's real name. "Would you like to make it now?"

"What, and leave all this?" Aves said, not bothering to get up from the cot. "I'll get to it."

The officer frowned. "You'd better make it a good one, then. This offer expires in an hour."

"Aren't you going to take them up on that?" Nadal asked once the door slid shut.

"Sure. I'm just trying to figure out who to call."

"Can't you call your buddy? You know, the hotshot X-Wing jock?"

Aves shook his head. "I think this is beyond his pay grade."

Nadal frowned. "He bailed us out on Trogan..."

"That was a bar brawl. This is slightly more serious." He really didn't want to involve Wedge in this if there was any possible way around it.

Most of the other groups they had friendly relationships with in the system were too small-time to be of any help on something like this... Billey was here, though, Aves remembered suddenly. Karrde would have his ass for involving Billey, but it was likely their only way out of this without calling down all sorts of unwanted attention from the Republic brass. As soon as the Republic managed to slice through their fabricated logs and fake ids and realized who they really were – and, most importantly, who they worked for – the whole lot of them would be on their way to Coruscant and a full-scale Republic Intelligence interrogation. It would take time to crack Ghent's typically brilliant cover, but they would eventually figure it out.

Aves had a sudden flash of Ellie at the tender mercies of a squad of Intelligence officers.

"Hey!" he said abruptly, banging on the door. "Hey! I do want to make that call."

It took Billey less than two hours to bail them all out. Dravis showed up, looking pissed, with a frankly mind-blowing amount of money, filled out all the right forms and they were out – with, of course, a stern warning not to leave the city, let alone the planet.

Clearly, the Repubs had yet to break through their cover IDs and were still treating them like small-time thieves, instead of what they really were – which was just, Aves had to admit, slightly more big-time thieves. But big-time thieves with search-and-detain orders out for them in both Republic and Imperial space. The reasons the Empire wanted them were fairly obvious. He wasn't totally sure what Karrde had done to piss off the New Republic, though.

"Boss wants to see you asap," Dravis said, leading them into Billey's rather nice townhouse. It was in one of the city's more upscale and respectable neighborhoods, which was a surprise to Aves. He'd gotten used to Karrde's penchant for remote and exotic locales.

"Getting called on the carpet?" Nadal asked.

"Something like that. We owe him big for this one; he probably wants to be sure he can collect."

"While we're young, Aves," Dravis said, pointing in the direction of Billey's office.

The lights were low in the office, but Aves could just make out the shadow of Billey's lift chair and an old-style antique walking stick leaning against the far wall. The man himself was seated behind a very nice carved wood desk – a present, Aves knew, from Karrde, and an expensive one at that.

"Nice place," he said as Dravis exited and closed the door behind him.

"Crime does occasionally pay," Billey said, turning up the lights a bit in order to get a better look at him. "You don't look too much worse for wear. Have a seat."

"Thank you," he said, taking the chair that Billey indicated.

"Whiskey?"

"Water, if you don't mind. They weren't real big on keeping us comfortable in there."

"Of course," he said, pouring a glass. "Dravis will make sure the others are seen to as well."

"Thanks."

"Lucky for you that you happened to find yourselves on this particular planet..."

"I think maybe that's your luck rubbing off on us." Billey's good luck was legendary; Billey himself was a legend, not to put too fine a point on it. Even in semi-retirement, he was something of a force to be reckoned with. "I hope I did the right thing by calling on you. We're in your debt..."

Billey waved a hand as though it was no big deal. "You did the right thing. I know Karrde likes to imagine that I don't want my hands dirty anymore, but I don't mind. It keeps things interesting."

Aves relaxed a little at that. "Well, hopefully it won't be too interesting for you."

Billey poured a whiskey for himself. "Dravis tells me the ship is a total loss."

"Is it? It's academic anyway. Even if it wasn't, the Repubs aren't exactly going to hand it back to us."

"Well," Billey said, considering, "there would be other ways around that, but it's a moot point now. I trust you dumped anything that could track back to Karrde?"

"Standard ops. We're all clean, except of course for the sixty or so cartons of contraband they found on us – but that's not directly traceable to Karrde."

"You didn't dump that?"

"We tried to, but, unfortunately, there was the issue of the sucking vacuum of space between us and our upper cargo hold via a nice big turbolaser blast. They boarded us before anyone had a chance to suit up and get in there. We dumped the really incriminating stuff, though. The worst they've got us on is some minor possession, maybe intent to illegally distribute, but even that's stretching it without more proof." He sat back in the chair, actually allowing himself to relax for a moment, before saying, "Of course, that assumes that they don't figure out who we really work for..."

"Which isn't an especially safe assumption. Our Republic friends are getting much better at seeing through all the usual tricks." Billey was staring into the whiskey decanter, apparently lost in thought. When he did speak again, he said, "How is Karrde?"

Aves shrugged and made a non-committal noise.

Billey paused, considering, then said, "If you'll forgive my saying so, things don't appear to be going all that well."

Aves scrubbed his hands over his face. "You know, I think I will have that whiskey."

Billey laughed gruffly, and poured him two very generous fingers of what turned out to be a pretty damned fine Corellian blend. "Helps, doesn't it? Now, as you were saying..."

"Look, I'm grateful to you for getting us out of this jam, but I'm not going to talk out of turn about Karrde."

"I'm not asking you to, son," Billey said, suddenly seeming a bit less formidable. "Karrde's an old friend; I know the last year or two has been rough. I don't get out much anymore, so..."

"Yeah, okay." Aves took a drink, and shook his head. "There was that whole business with Skywalker, and then Mara..."

"What exactly happened there? I've heard the rumors, of course..."

"I don't really know, to be honest. I wasn't there; I was at Bilbringi nearly getting my ass shot off by the Imperials. Karrde hasn't exactly been in the mood to share, either."

"The whole thing is rather unbelievable," Billey said, more to himself than to Aves. Billey lapsed into thoughtful silence, and Aves couldn't help noticing that he had one of those fancy holographic picture cubes on his desk, filled with pictures of a little blonde girl at different ages. The pictures stopped at around age seven, though, and the kid's mother was conspicuous by her absence in all of them.

The stories about Billey and Aud Breen had already been the stuff of legend by the time Aves had joined up with Karrde's crew. He'd never met her himself, but the way Karrde talked about her she must've been a sight to see. Aud had been gone for a long time; the kid had to be at least a teenager by now. Maybe if anyone could understand where Karrde's head was at right now, it was Billey.

"We'll have to get you all off-planet tonight," Billey said, abruptly back to business. "Before our friends figure out who've they've really caught here."

"If we skip, you'll lose all the money you put up as bond..."

"An acceptable loss." He shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time. Besides, I think Karrde can find a way to reimburse me."

"He will, you have my word on that." Aves reached a hand across the desk and Billey shook it. "I'm in your debt, personally, too. If there's ever anything I can do..."

Billey smiled and it wasn't particularly nice. "Be careful what promises you make, boy. I might just take you up on it." He released Aves's hand, and said, "Dravis should have most of the arrangements made by now. We'll have to be discreet, of course..."

"Of course." Aves stood to go. "And if you do need anything, you can reach me through the normal channels..."

"That won't be necessary. I'll be seeing you again soon, at any rate."

"You will?"

"I'm going to pay your boss a visit. I've got a thing or two to say to him."

* * *

Coruscant never quite seemed to change somehow. Wedge had only been there once while it was still the Imperial capital, but he'd been struck, once the Alliance had captured it and made its own home there, by how little it changed. The city just continued on its way, governments rose and fell, people lived and died, and the city remained much as always, untouched.

After nearly fifteen months out on the edges of Republic space, it felt like something noticeable ought to have changed – especially in the aftermath of Bilbringi – that something tangible should be different, but it wasn't. Even the rumble of conversation in Central Command was much as he'd left it, only more so. It reminded him, in a way that managed to be simultaneously comforting and alarming, of his early days with the Alliance. There was a sense of focus, of recklessness, of desperation being refined into brilliance.

He moved through the Palace corridors, headed away from the politicians and toward CentCom. He'd always questioned the wisdom of having both the central seat of government and the military command in the same place, though, admittedly, never out loud. Now, though, in the wake of Thrawn's successful siege of the planet and the rumors he kept hearing about what they'd discovered on Wayland, he felt like someone should bring it up. Maybe Bel Iblis already had. He'd find out soon enough, at any rate.

"Antilles, there you are." Sena Midanyl, Bel Iblis's aide-de-camp, took him by the arm and steered him through the crowd. "The general's been waiting for you."

"We were a little delayed-"

"Totally understandable, but, as you can probably imagine, he's got a pretty full day," she said, and deposited him in the general's office.

"General," he said in greeting.

"Commander Antilles," Garm Bel Iblis said, not standing up, "about time." Then, "As you were. No need for that parade ground nonsense here." He indicated a seat in front of the desk. "Glad to be back?"

"Definitely, sir. Though it took me a bit to get used to the startling lack of people trying to kill me."

"Oh, give it a day or two," said the room's third occupant. Han Solo lounged in a chair, tipped back onto its back legs, his booted feet propped casually on Bel Iblis' desk.

"As long as I've got you backing me up, General," Wedge said pointedly, "I'm sure we can hold our own in any firefight."

"There you go with the titles again. It doesn't mean anything more now than it did at Endor." Han waved a dismissive hand and nearly overbalanced in the chair.

"It's good to have you back on active duty, though," Wedge said, meaning it. He'd always liked serving alongside Han, even if it had meant trouble more often than not.

Han's expression turned serious, though only briefly. "It seemed like the right thing to do, you know, after..."

"I never got a chance to say how sorry I was to hear-"

He waved it off. "I knew, we knew. Thanks, though."

"Well, glad to have you back, anyway, despite the circumstances."

"So, Commander," Bel Iblis said, indicating a seat on the other side of the desk. "We've asked you here today to talk about something... a little outside the box."

Wedge looked to Han, who grinned at him, back to form. "I told him you had something of a reputation for trouble."

"I wouldn't go quite that far."

"Nevertheless," Bel Iblis said, "you don't always run your squad exactly by the book, do you?"

"I'm not getting court-martialed, am I, sir?" he said, only half-joking.

Bel Iblis actually indulged a grin at that. "We're not really living in by-the-book times, are we?"

"You can say that again," Han said. "Look, kid, what we're really talking about here are contacts out on the fringe – people who won't talk to me anymore, but who seem a little more inclined to talk to you."

"We're talking about Talon Karrde's smuggling operation."

"Oh," Wedge said, truly surprised.

"Would you say that they trust you?"

"Smugglers don't trust anyone, General." He looked at Han in appeal.

He shrugged casually. "I told him. But who listens to me, anyway?"

"A few of Karrde's guys are – I don't know – drinking buddies? Since Bilbringi, they've been friendly enough."

_You go up against a Star Destroyer with someone, he ought to remember you._

And be willing to pick up the occasional bar tab, and bail a guy out of the drunk tank, and, even, in one particularly desperate case, 'misplace' a carton of Republic medical supplies in a spot your buddy just happens to know about.

"We've done each other a few favors here and there," he admitted.

"Good," Bel Iblis said. "That's exactly what we were hoping you'd say." He paused. "We need a meeting."

"With who?"

"With Karrde himself, preferably, but we'll take what we can get."

Wedge shook his head. "I don't think they'll agree to that. Karrde has made his feelings about the Republic pretty clear..."

"Which is why it has to be you." Bel Iblis leaned back in his chair. "They seem to trust you." Han rolled his eyes. "Or at the very least, like you," Bel Iblis amended. "We know that at least one of Karrde's associates has contacted you in the last month."

Wedge frowned. "Should I even ask how you knew that? No, never mind." He shook his head. "Why are you looking to find Karrde anyway? When a man like that decides to hide, he usually stays hidden."

"That's why we're hoping you can get our message to him through his people."

"You still haven't answered my question." Wedge looked from Han to Bel Iblis. "What do you want with Karrde? He can't have anything to do with Thrawn. It's absurd."

After a moment's consideration, Bel Iblis leaned across the desk and said softly, "Talon Karrde has something we want."

* * *

Aves found solace in cigarettes. He lit up, shifting the cigarette from one hand to the other, flexing his fingers and looking down at his scraped knuckles. The landing pit smelled like grease and scorched metal. A handful of the usual suspects had met the ship when it landed. Karrde, though, was notable by his absence. They'd said he was on his way, though, and to stay put.

"He owes Billey a down payment on that debt..." Dravis said, sounding annoyed – though to be fair, he pretty much always sounded annoyed.

"You heard them, he's on his way. He's good for it, you know that. Karrde always honors his debts..."

"A couple years ago? Sure. But he's a loose cannon these days, and you know it."

Aves frowned. Dravis had been pissing him off since they left Jeldwen, but he'd managed to keep it in check so far. "Whatever else may have happened, he's never welched on a debt – or betrayed his friends."

"Really? You might want to ask Mazzic and Gillespee about that one..." Dravis said, getting a just a shade too loud for Aves's taste.

"Not in front of an audience, okay?"

Ghent, just for example, was hovering nearby. "Hey, uh, Aves...?" he began.

"No, you can't bum a smoke." Aves replied, anticipating the question, turning pointedly away from Dravis. "If you want one, you should buy your own..."

"What?" Ghent said, in that perpetually distracted way of his. "Oh, no thanks. I'm good." Aves rolled his eyes and lit another for himself. "Where's Ellie? I thought she came back with you?"

"She's here... somewhere."

Ghent stood up, practically on his tiptoes, scanning around for her.

"Hey," Aves said, putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back down. "She's fine. Everyone's fine."

"I was worried."

"Since when do you even notice other people?" he said, but Ghent had already taken off, headed for where Ellie had emerged from the ship. "You know, like that."

"Can_ I_ bum a smoke?" Dravis asked, and Aves could hardly say no, especially with Karrde MIA. He sighed and handed over the package.

Dravis took two. Bastard.

"Finally," he said, and Aves looked up from glowering at his now nearly empty pack of smokes to see Karrde entering the landing pit.

He looked just about the way Aves felt. Terrific.

"Hello again, Dravis," Karrde said.

"Billey sends his regards."

"We're in his debt, of course."

"I hope you mean that literally," Dravis said, but needn't have. Karrde handed over a tiny data card. Dravis popped it into an almost impressively outmoded datapad, held together with a generous coat of hull sealant and, apparently, sheer force of will.

"It's all there," Karrde said, letting his tone cool just perceptibly.

"And by all, you mean...?" Dravis didn't bother to look up, checking the transfers, apparently to make sure they were legit.

"Twenty-thousand. I think that should be sufficient for now," Karrde said.

It must have been because Dravis socked Aves on the shoulder in farewell and hightailed it to his ship.

"I take it Dravis is in a hurry?" Karrde mused, in that irritatingly understated way he had about him.

"In a hurry not to be standing next to someone with a target on his back – or a pair of someones."

"I'm glad to see you back safely..." Karrde began.

"I lost us a ship," Aves said, dispensing with the formalities.

"No," Karrde said calmly, "we lost a ship. All part of running the business. It's happened before and will happen again."

"You'd better hope it doesn't. We can barely afford a replacement ship, even if we can find someone who'll sell to us." He tossed his cigarette to the ground.

"We'll find someone," Karrde said. "We always do."

Briefly, Aves considered telling Karrde that Billey was likely to show up here, unannounced, any day now. Billey, after all, had ships, had access to resources that could help them. He kept his mouth shut, though. Billey hadn't wanted Karrde to know, for some obscure reason of his own – probably playing some psychological advantage. The two of them were an awful lot alike that way.

"Trouble?" Karrde asked, frowning at him.

"Nothing new," Aves replied, letting Karrde put a hand on his shoulder and steer him toward their base, toward 'home' – or what passed for it these days – and the promise of a mostly hot meal and a few hours much-needed rest.

* * *

On the days when he was honest with himself (which were, admittedly, fewer and less frequent than they used to be), Karrde acknowledged that a lesser man probably would have given up by now. A lesser man probably would have just let Thrawn catch him, or gone to ground on some quiet, distant world, leaving his people to fend for themselves – or even, and he didn't really like to think about this – even in the abstract – put his own weapon in his mouth and just pulled the trigger to save Thrawn the trouble. The fact that he himself hadn't done any of those things was, he was forced to admit, to his credit.

It was the bare minimum he expected of himself, but it was to his credit.

Most of the rest of the time, he managed to find some equilibrium between honesty and the little bit of denial he needed to cultivate just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The remaining days were the ones he spent looking out at the galaxy from the bottom of a whiskey bottle. He tried to keep those to a minimum, but it was more of a struggle than he liked to admit.

Things really had, suddenly and spectacularly, gone to shit. On those honest days, he also admitted to himself exactly how much of this was Mara's fault – and how much was his own. It was like they'd put flame to tinder and burned their own house down around them.

He was thinking this, darkly, pictures of the lifeless wreck of the _Starry Ice_ on the terminal in front of him – and considering whether maybe today was a whiskey day, after all – when there was a knock at his door.

"Hey, boss?" It was Aves, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. "Someone here to see you..."

"Hello, Karrde," said just about the last person he would have expected to see there. Billey, his shadow looming large and dark behind Aves, prodded the younger man gently forward into the room, heaving himself into the first available seat. His hand shook just perceptibly on his walking stick, stubborn as always, refusing to use his lift chair unless he absolutely had to. "Well, aren't you going to say hello to me?"

Aves swallowed hard. "Uh, Billey's here to see you..."

"So I see," Karrde said, trying to read Billey's expression from across the room. "Did you know this was coming?" he asked Aves, and the long silence was all he needed to confirm it.

"Boss-"

"You might have warned me, is all," Karrde said coolly, and Aves grimaced.

"Go easy on the boy," Billey replied. "I asked him not to say anything, and I had just sprung him from a New Republic jail."

"So now you're here to collect on the debt?"

"I'm here to have a conversation with an old friend. That's still allowed in this brave, new galaxy we're faced with, isn't it?" Then, to Aves, "That'll do, son."

"You shouldn't have come all this way," Karrde said, once Aves had left, pulling his own chair over closer to Billey. He looked like death on a platter, breathing heavily from even just this little bit of exertion. "It's not worth the risk."

"Because I'm stuck in that damned chair most of the time, or because these days you're lucky to stay one step ahead of both Republic Intelligence and a very pissed off Imperial Grand Admiral?"

"Both?"

"Well, as far as the first point goes, I'm tougher to kill than that. You should know that better than anyone. As to the second..."

"I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd followed Mazzic and Gillespee's lead and run for the hills."

"Most of the others think they're well shut of you, it's true."

"They might be right," Karrde admitted. "I miscalculated rather badly."

"Are you admitting that you were wrong about something? Out loud, in front of witnesses?" Billey said in disbelief. "Well, it's a good thing I'm here – matters are worse than I thought."

"Is now really the time to needle me?"

"Someone needs to do something. I've never seen you like this before, and I've seen you at your best – and what I thought was your worst." He looked lost in memory. "You were the smartest kid I'd ever seen, too smart for your own damned good. I wasn't sure whether to cultivate you or kill you before you posed a threat." He smiled and it was entirely unpleasant. "So, what in hell's name has happened to you?"

Mara had happened, but Karrde wasn't about to admit that out loud. Skywalker and the damned New Republic had happened, and he'd gotten tangled up in something he couldn't control – but had still been foolish enough to try. He'd overreached, and now Mara was dead, the Republic had screwed him over when he least expected it, and it was only a matter of time before the Empire caught up with him and had him killed.

"Hmm," was all Billey said, cocking his head to one side as though that would help him better read Karrde's expression. "It wasn't all your fault, you know. Sometimes matters are just out of our control."

"I made a very successful business out of things being under control."

"And now the world is different. It's not easy, but you're going to have to adapt." There was another extended pause. "Either way, we have some business to discuss."

Karrde raised an eyebrow. "Is that why you came here? To make me an offer?"

"Why did you think I was here?"

"Well, I supposed you…" Karrde paused, feeling a bit sheepish.

"Oh, I see," Billey said. "You thought I was here to pick you up, dust you off and tell you to be a good boy from now on." He narrowed his eyes. "I'm not your father, Karrde, and as much as I like you, I'm a businessman first. It bugs the hell out of me to see valuable resources squandered like this."

"I won't sell. You know that, don't you?"

Billey tapped his walking stick on the floor, an unreadable expression on his heavily lined face. "Two years ago I would have said nothing in the galaxy could tempt you to sell. Now…" He spread his large hands helplessly. "But you misunderstand, anyway – I'm not here to take over your operation; I'm here to sell you a ship."

That was so unexpected, Karrde actually laughed. "A ship? Really? Well, all our problems are solved then."

Billey frowned at him. "One major problem is solved, at any rate – and I might be able to help you with some of the others." He paused significantly. "About Aves..."

"If you're about to make excuses for him, don't bother."

"You'd do well to go a little easier on him. You've put him in a fairly impossible position." One large hand descended, a little too roughly, on Karrde's shoulder. "There's only one reason he hasn't split on you, Karrde – and don't think he hasn't had offers. It's because he's loyal to you personally. That's pretty damned rare in this business. I'd suggest you don't throw it away over this."

"What's your stake in all this?"

"Well, it could be because you're the son I never had." Karrde looked at the older man in disbelief. Billey laughed. "Or, it could be that I see an opportunity for the pair of us to profit from this war - if you're interested in a partnership."

"Just like old times."

"In the old times, I was the boss."

"And what would you be now?"

"A partner, and a mostly silent one at that. Can you live with that?"

"You know I'm always open to working with you," Karrde said. "That's not going to change."

"Good. Remember you said that, because there are some conditions to this partnership..."

Now the other shoe would drop. "And what are those, exactly?"

"I'll want to protect my investment, of course, and you're dangerously short on seasoned personnel..."

"You want to send me a babysitter."

"Something like that. I prefer to think of it, though, as temporary strategic resources."

"You missed your calling as a bureaucrat..." Karrde muttered. "Strategic for you, or for me?"

"Both, if we do it right." He paused, considering. "So, what do you say? Two weeks from today, you pick the location? I'll have your ship and your 'strategic resources' ready and waiting."

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

Billey smiled grimly. "Not really."

* * *

The Mid-Rim was a far cry from the grandeur of the old Imperial center, but over the past six years Pellaeon had gotten used to it.

He wasn't at all pleased by that development.

Accepting the Mid-Rim meant that the galaxy had really changed; that he had changed. He'd become older, resigned to a galaxy without the glory and order of the Empire. The only prospect worse than that was a galaxy in which Grand Admiral Thrawn didn't exist – because as long as they still had Thrawn, there was still hope.

Hope of what, exactly, Pellaeon had begun to wonder over the past few months – but it was hope, nonetheless. At this point, he'd take what he could get.

At the very least, he had the comfort of knowing that the enemy was as unsure as he was. They were reacting to every ghost of a threat, convinced that somehow, somewhere, Thrawn was waiting for just the right time. That every report, every unusual occurrence carried the first clue of Thrawn's next grand strategy – if only they could put the pieces together quickly enough.

Thrawn was waiting, all right, but for what, Pellaeon didn't know – and the Grand Admiral certainly wasn't of a mind to share. Instead, they harried the Rebels where they could. They still had men and supplies and ships enough to pose a formidable threat. Those resources, though, weren't inexhaustible – especially without Wayland's cloning facilities at their disposal. In the old days, they would simply have conscripted soldiers when cloning wouldn't cover their needs. Then, of course, they'd had the whole of the galaxy to draw from. Now matters were different.

Still, everyone – Rebel and Imperial alike – expected Thrawn to produce another masterstroke on the level of the last one, the one that had so very nearly worked.

He hadn't, though. He showed no sign of doing so, and Pellaeon worried about that. Was it possible that, after all this time, cultivating a reputation for invincibility, that Thrawn himself simply didn't know what to do next?

"Captain Pellaeon?" A junior officer saluted smartly. That, at least, hadn't changed in these last few directionless months. "The Grand Admiral would like to see you, sir."

Pellaeon nodded and headed down to the Grand Admiral's command room. There were no longer any bodyguards flanking the door. Thrawn had learned that lesson and lived to tell, after all.

"Grand Admiral Thrawn, sir?" he said into the voice-recognition panel on the door. "You wanted to see me?"

The door slid easily open and Pellaeon walked in. Thrawn was sitting, much as always, and beckoned him in.

"Good evening, Captain," he said, without looking away from the lone image on his display screen. "You recognize them, of course. The Manarai Mountains on Coruscant. At one time they were part of a vast range, stretching nearly the length of the continent."

"This isn't your usual-"

Thrawn smiled slowly, finally looking at Pellaeon. "I thought, perhaps, it was time for a slightly different approach. The interesting thing about something as complex as a mountain range, Captain, is that for all its seeming randomness, for all the outside factors at work, it remains – at a certain level – inherently predictable. It's simply a matter of scale." He touched a key on his terminal and the twin peaks of the Manarais multiplied themselves, rather impressively, across the ring of repeater displays. He made a satisfied sound, as though he'd seen something in the images that pleased him. Then said, "You wonder why I haven't acted?" He swiveled his chair away from the display. Pellaeon nodded, and Thrawn continued, "I've been thinking about survival, Captain. Survival and conquest. They're very different, but equally important."

"Yes, sir."

"The Emperor, for all his cunning and his ideals, wasn't particularly interested in anyone's survival – save his own, of course. I wish the Empire to survive. To achieve that end, sacrifices may be required, but I choose to make them wisely. An Empire without its vision is hardly an Empire worth having." He steepled his fingers together, looking out at the empty space surrounding them. "We may be called upon, Captain, to do things we would not otherwise do. But I have faith that we will be equal to the challenge."


	3. The Shape of the Data

**3. The Shape of the Data**

Whatever else might have happened to the galaxy over the past few years, Karrde could still set a pretty fine table when the occasion warranted it. It wasn't as easy as it used to be. Food was often in short supply these days, and the price of alcohol had soared back up to where it had been during the height of the Rebellion. It was important, though, to maintain form, to treat Billey like an honored guest.

In the two weeks since Billey had last come calling, they'd spoken once, via long-range comm. Karrde, liking this deal less and less the more he thought about it, had wanted some reassurances – which Billey, understandably, had been reluctant to give him.

"I'd like a little more information about what I'm getting myself into here..."

"I think," Billey had said, in a tone that was not at all reassuring, "that you'll find Maddoc to be exactly what you need." He paused, whether intentionally or because of a hiccup in the feed, then said, "There aren't any guarantees, though, Karrde. You of all people ought to know that. I'll keep my end of the bargain, I'll try to help you make some smart decisions, but there's no hard and fast guarantee that this is going to work."

Which brought them to today, and a very nice meal.

Karrde had managed to get his hands on a pretty decent bottle from one of the last vintages of Alderaanian wine, from the collection of some minor Imperial governor who'd fallen on both political and financial hard times. The price had been more than a little inflated, and the wine itself was likely to be lost on Billey, but he'd appreciate the rarity and the gesture nonetheless.

"I know you usually prefer whiskey," Karrde said, pouring a glass for each of them, then hovering over the third glass on the table in an unspoken question.

"I asked Maddoc to wait a bit so you and I could get the niceties out of the way first," Billey said, and Karrde filled the glass anyway. "I do like my whiskey, but knowing you this is something esoteric and damned expensive, so I'll play along." He took a drink and shrugged. "Not bad." Then, "Where's Aves? I hoped he'd be here for this."

"We're spread pretty thin these days, unfortunately..."

"Well, we'll just have to do another round of introductions in a less formal setting then. You didn't have to go to all this trouble, you know."

"I know I didn't. I prefer to."

"Good, I'm glad to see that some things haven't changed, at any rate." The door slid open, and Billey beamed at the entrant. "There you are. Perfect timing..."

Contrary to Karrde's expectations, Maddoc was a young woman, olive-skinned, slight and lean. She was certainly striking, but a little cold, with a stern mouth and black hair knotted severely away from her face. She stood all of about five foot nothing and looked like an especially strong breeze might knock her over. On top of that, she appeared to be maybe a year or two past adolescence – at the maximum.

Maybe Billey had taken that babysitter crack literally.

"No," Karrde said flatly, and the girl raised an eyebrow in Billey's direction.

"If you'd excuse us for just a moment, Zillah?"

"No," Karrde repeated once she'd left the room. "I thought you were going to bring me some tough old vet who could keep people in line."

"And so she can..."

"She's barely old enough to remember the first Death Star."

"Don't exaggerate."

"Fine, but she's still too young."

"Mara was younger," Billey pointed out mildly.

"That situation was entirely different."

Billey looked sidelong at him, his mouth set in a firm line. "I suppose I'll have to take your word for that." He continued, "At any rate, she's not as young as she looks – and even if she was, age isn't as important in this line of work as experience. She's got that and then some."

_Time has never been as important to the universe as ability and results..._

Memories had a way of doing that to him lately, cropping up, unwanted, when he least expected. That particular memory was sharp and clear, painful – Mara, back when she'd still been just an interesting puzzle. He shook it off with an effort, and took a rather generous drink of wine.

"There's more to it than that, though, isn't there? Let me guess – she's another one of your adoptees? What's her sad story?"

"None of your business," Billey replied, unperturbed. "What matters is that she's one of my best people, and she's loyal."

"Loyal because you rescued her from some tenement slum or back-alley brothel..." It figured. Billey had always had a bit of a soft spot that way. His own daughter was safely packed away at some fancy boarding school, deep inside the Core and far away from her father's business.

Billey actually laughed. "I dare you to call her a whore to her face and see what happens. It might adjust your attitude."

"Fine, maybe that isn't her story – but there's something. There always is with you."

"Well, there certainly was when I found you all those years ago, so you might be right."

"That's a little over the line, don't you think?"

"Just reminding you that you weren't any different from her not so long ago, and look at how far you've come." He set his wine glass down with a decided thud. "You take her on, or there's no deal – and you need this deal, you need a ship."

Karrde sighed, accepting the inevitable. "Fine, she gets three months."

"Six – and I reserve the right to pull her out any time, or to send her back to you if things still aren't where they need to be after six months."

"Fine, fine. I doubt it will be necessary, though."

"Have you looked around at your organization recently?"

"Now that's really below the belt..."

He softened a little. "I'm not blaming you, Karrde. The universe really has conspired to put you in a bad spot, and it doesn't help that on top of it you lost someone..." He paused a moment, considering his choice of words. "You lost someone valuable."

"That's a rather politic way of putting it."

"I've been there, you know that. The personal side is, well, personal. It only makes it that much harder when that person was central to the professional side of things, too."

Karrde really, really didn't want to talk about this – especially not with Billey, who knew him well enough to spot a lie or evasion easily. "I think we've left your associate out in the corridor long enough, don't you?"

"She's patient," Billey said. "Another useful trait. But, yes, let's invite her back in.

"Things all resolved now?" Maddoc asked Billey when the door slid open for the second time, her face and voice carefully neutral.

"For the moment..." He patted the back of the chair beside him, looking rather paternal. "Come sit and have some of this wine – Karrde says it's a good one, and he'd know – and then we can talk about what comes next."

* * *

Unlike most military men, Bel Iblis actually didn't mind politicians all that much. Having been one himself at one point, he understood them better than most of his colleagues in the Republic High Command. The military suited him better than politics, though, he'd found over the years. He'd lost his patience for doing things slowly, for all the endless talking that went along with democracy. This wasn't necessarily to his credit, he knew, which was why he was very careful to cultivate that memory of the Senator he'd been as a young man, idealistic and determined, convinced he could change the galaxy for the better with words alone.

The Republic military's rank-and-file had a particularly acrimonious relationship with their politicians – something that probably shouldn't have been surprising, considering that, unlike most military structures, the Republic's was comprised almost entirely of men and women who'd made careers out of bucking authority, routinely breaking laws and flat-out mutiny.

"I hate these guys," Solo said from beside him, glaring at the long table at the front of the room. A case in point.

The Councilor from the Salara system, clearly overhearing them, sniffed and turned away.

"How's Leia?" Bel Iblis asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from topics that would likely get them tossed out of there before the committee had even convened.

"The docs have her on complete bed-rest, which... Well, you can imagine how much she likes that."

Bel Iblis chuckled. "Can I ever."

"I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose – a kid of mine that impatient to get out into the world? Who would have guessed, right?"

"And the twins?"

"Getting big enough to get into serious trouble more days than not."

"Again," Bel Iblis remarked with a smile, "who would have guessed?"

"Serves me right, I guess, after all the hell I raised as a kid."

"How's the rest of the family?" Bel Iblis asked carefully.

"You mean Luke..." Solo looked uncharacteristically serious for a moment. "It's been a rough year, for a lot of reasons. He's doing all right. It's hard to crack that surface sometimes, though, and know what he's really thinking."

Bel Iblis had long had the sense that Solo and Skywalker hadn't been completely forthcoming about everything that had happened on Wayland, and how their mission had managed to go so spectacularly wrong. Leia was equally tight-lipped on the subject, and none of the other players were in a position to tell Bel Iblis much of anything.

Solo read the silence with more perception than he was generally given credit for. "Leave it alone, Garm. Don't put me in a position where I have to tell you things you'd rather not know."

The committee meeting was called to order then and Solo actually looked relieved. Then, as though catching himself actually being glad to be stuck in a committee meeting, he smiled sheepishly and took a seat next to Bel Iblis.

"Saved by the gavel, I guess."

"Does that mean you're going to cut our duly elected representatives some slack for once?" Bel Iblis asked, quietly amused, while the opening remarks commenced.

"Depends, I guess, on how much of a hard time they give us over that budget of yours."

"I'm expecting a fight, but not a big one."

Councilor Dara Pres was the chair of the committee. She was a known quantity; Bel Iblis had dealings with her going back to the early days of the Alliance. Back then, she'd been a primary school teacher. She'd fled her homeworld with a shuttle full of schoolchildren, barely one step ahead of a major Imperial strike. The Imperials had been on a fishing expedition, looking for a Rebel base that had actually been two systems over, but had blown the hell out of the planet anyway, just as a show of force.

Dara had showed up on the Alliance's doorstep ten days later, with twenty six-years-olds in tow and a demand that the Alliance do something to clean up the mess they'd made.

He never had quite figured out how she'd found their base.

She was no pushover, to be sure, but she'd hear them out – and she'd more than likely come down in their favor.

"The remnants of the Empire must be dealt with swiftly," one of the Councilors – Kazan, perhaps? His name escaped Bel Iblis for the moment – was saying, wrapping up his opening statement.

"It's a fine sentiment on the face of it," Bel Iblis said softly, leaning over to Solo. "Practically speaking- Well, it's another matter entirely."

"That's all very well," Dara began, her manner disarming. She looked, in all honesty, like somebody's kindly aunt. But as she continued, that illusion fled pretty quickly. "But I think my esteemed colleague underestimates the difficulties involved in such a proposition..."

"Even if what you say is true, then it appears we've been granted a reprieve, however temporary. We should press our advantage..."

"And what advantage, exactly, is that?"

Kazan didn't answer, but looked pointedly at Solo and Bel Iblis.

"If you have access to information that the rest of this committee is unaware of, Councilor," she said, "feel free to share it now."

"Why don't I," Kazan said, with way too much confidence for someone with his security clearance, "hand that over to the experts?"

That put an interesting spin on things. "If you're ready for us, Madame Chairwoman," Bel Iblis said, standing up, "we've no objection to going first."

"None at all." Solo looked positively thrilled.

For her part, Dara actually seemed amused. "Well, let's get it over with then. How much for guns and butter, gentlemen?"

Bel Iblis handed her a slim datapad, with all the figures already keyed up and ready for review, then sat front and center while she passed the data around to the other committee members.

"That is a whole lot of money, General," she said, looking from the proposal to Bel Iblis and back again.

"We want to increase production of capital ships and fighters. We want to prepare for a shift in strategy. For too long we've been content to simply counter the Imperials and then pull back. We want, now, to increase our incursions into their territory and hold, where we can."

She raised an eyebrow. "You're talking about occupation?"

"We're talking," Solo said, completely out of turn, "about liberation."

"That's one way of looking at it, I suppose," she said, choosing not to remark on the interruption. "It's not, of course, General, that this committee is opposed to the idea of liberation on its face – we want the entire galaxy to have the freedom for self-determination. But, I must say, I'm not entirely convinced we currently have the resources to be successful in such an undertaking."

"Well, we aren't proposing implementing the strategy yet. All we're proposing is that we begin to shift resources that will allow us to build to that point."

Kazan glanced at Bel Iblis, looking thoughtful, and began to jot something on a data tablet.

"You have something to add, Councilor Kazan?" Dara asked smoothly, still perusing the datapad and not bothering to look up.

"Just wondering whether there are any other developments that Generals Bel Iblis or Solo care to share? Anything that would go to explaining exactly why we think now is the time for this shift in strategy..."

By the look on his face, Kazan knew – or had made a pretty good guess – that this had something to do with Wayland. Speculation, of course, had been rampant these last few months. The last thing Bel Iblis was going to do, though, was spell it all out for him.

"As you say, Councilor, Bilbringi granted us a reprieve. We've pushed the Imperial forces back to the Mid-Rim, taken back some of the ground they gained during their last major campaign. If there was ever a time to press that advantage, it's now."

"Well, we'll take that under advisement," Dara said. "We'll need a few days to review and discuss your proposal, of course..."

"Of course. If there's nothing else?"

"A moment, if you don't mind, General," said the woman at the end of the table, marking her the most junior member of the committee. "I have a question or two for you." Tovah Medyoff was one of the newest members of the Council. Frighteningly young and inexperienced, at least from Bel Iblis' perspective, she was, nevertheless, incredibly popular in the Mid-Rim system she represented.

"Of course." He hadn't had much interaction with her up to this point, but she had a solid reputation.

"You're asking for an awfully big commitment from this committee, without providing us a lot of detail..."

"Well, there is security to consider," he began.

"From where I sit, it looks like a potentially dangerous move – and one you're asking us to make largely based on good faith," she said, without flinching. That was a surprise. Medyoff's political positions were usually fairly moderate – it was one of the reasons for her widespread popularity. "The Republic, and the Alliance before it, were never in the business of revenge, General. But Thrawn embarrassed the New Republic at a critical juncture, and now we appear to want only to make sure the rest of the galaxy watches us make him pay for that..."

"I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that," Bel Iblis replied, "but I'll concede that there's some truth to what you say. The people want a response – they deserve one."

"If there's more to it than that, then why don't you share some of those reasons with us?" She looked him right in the eye, no malice in her face, just a kind of cool determination. She was, he had to concede, a rather impressive young lady. "I want to support you, General, but I need reasons. You mentioned what the people deserve... Well, I owe it to the people who sent me here to make good decisions, based on valid information."

Behind him, Solo coughed slightly, probably happy it was Bel Iblis in the hot seat and not him.

"There are, of course, things I can't share publicly, Councilor. I'm sure you appreciate that?"

"Then share what you can, General." She paused, still gazing at him like she was taking the measure of him. "And don't be surprised if you receive a request from my office to brief me privately on the rest of it."

He looked her in the eye. "This isn't simple revenge, Councilor. We've wasted enough blood and treasure on the likes of Thrawn. The High Command wants to see this business finished, and finished well. This is the groundwork for a larger campaign."

"And the end goal of this campaign?" Dara asked, frowning now.

"To take the Imperial shipyard at Bilbringi and hold it, so we can use it ourselves. Intelligence tells us the repairs are nearly complete. The Imperials have spent more than a year and considerable amount of their treasury to build it back up again – just in time for us to take it right out from under them."

"Well, that's certainly saying something, isn't it?" She exchanged a glance with Medyoff, then looked back at Bel Iblis, somehow managing to make him feel like a schoolchild who'd given his teacher a wildly inaccurate answer. "And, I suppose, has the nice side benefit of giving the people exactly what they're asking for – a nice easy victory, another feather in our caps after all this time. Assuming, it works, of course..."

"It's not without risk, of course, but no bold strategy is..."

"I think the Chairwoman and I are concerned," Medyoff cut in, "about more than just the physical or strategic risks. I'm talking about the 'whys' – why this particular fight, why now. I'm concerned about the risk we run of abandoning our principles. Not to put too fine a point on it, General, I'm worried about the spiritual risk. I'm worried about betraying our best selves." She paused. "And that doesn't even begin to get into the question of how we'll find the resources to man and supply all those ships..."

That was a question Bel Iblis would prefer to keep from being raised at all – let alone answered at this point.

"It's still early days," he said, attempting to deflect her interest in the topic.

"I'll just bet," she said meaningfully, and Kazan flicked a glance in her direction, leaving Bel Iblis to wonder how the hell Medyoff and Kazan seemed so well-informed about military secrets that should be above their pay grades – or whether he was just being paranoid, reading meaning in where there was none.

He risked a glance at Solo, though, and saw his own thoughts reflected there.

"Well, General," Dara said. "At the very least, it's always entertaining."

That was a clear dismissal, and Solo fell into step beside him as they headed for the door.

"I think we have a bit of a problem," he murmured, as they exited.

"Really?" Solo said, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "Just one?"

* * *

Talon Karrde, Zillah was discovering, was a real piece of work.

He wasn't at all what she'd been prepared to expect, either. Karrde had a reputation for cunning, ingenuity and a nearly unflappable sense of style. The reality of the man, though, was somewhat more complicated.

His organization was unlike any other she'd ever encountered – efficient, ordered, almost quasi-military. His core people were highly centralized – something most other fringe operations would have seen as suicide if the authorities ever caught up with them – and housed on these sophisticated bases, complete with barracks and chow halls. She almost felt like she'd been drafted into the old Imperial Fleet. Karrde, she also noticed, tended to recruit his people young, directly teaching them his way of doing things, making them loyal to him personally. She could see Billey's influence all over that approach, though Karrde definitely took it a couple steps further. It worked, too. His people were exceptionally loyal. She'd expected, in the week they'd been at Karrde's main base on some backwater planet with a name so unpronounceable that Zillah wasn't even going to try, to hear horror stories of attrition over the past year, of key talent abandoning Karrde in droves. Instead, it appeared that the more the rest of the galaxy screwed Karrde over, the closer most of these young men (and a few women) stuck to him. Not to say that there hadn't been a thinning of the ranks, of course, just that it mostly hadn't been voluntary.

"It makes a difference," Billey had said softly to her, looking around at their faces that very first afternoon.

"If you say so," she'd replied. "I really hope you know what you're doing." She'd meant it more ways than one. She'd begged him to go home once the initial introductions with Karrde had been made, but he'd insisted on coming here, on staying to make sure, in his words, that matters were 'settled.' Over the past few days, he'd looked increasingly like hell. He wasn't supposed to travel much, on doctor's orders, and certainly not halfway across the galaxy.

She hoped Karrde knew what a risk Billey was taking for him, but she doubted it.

"Come and sit with me a minute," Billey said, interrupting her thoughts. "Karrde can spare you for a bit."

Unpronounceable or not, it was a very nice planet – wide, blue skies and a warm sun. Billey was sitting out on the far side of the main building, under an old shade tree.

"I think Karrde would prefer to spare himself my company altogether..." She crossed a little patch of greenery to get to Billey, leaving the shadow of the building and sitting down on the ground beside him. He looked tired. "Are you really sure you ought to be out running around the galaxy like this?"

"I'm the boss," he said gently, "not you."

"Sometimes even the boss needs someone to tell him what's what."

He laughed. "That is true – and how's that going with our friend Karrde?"

"I have my doubts about whether this is going to work," she said. "He's actively hostile and uncooperative – and possibly just bugshit crazy."

Billey chuckled at that. "But we're going to help him, Zillah. I need you to help him."

"Why? What are you getting out of this?"

He shrugged. "A nice, tidy profit – and the chance to pay back some old debts. Karrde was a valuable associate and now he's a good friend."

"You old softie."

"I've never made any secret of the fact that I care about my people. You, Dravis, Karrde - loyalty is important, Zillah. You've all shown me loyalty and I intend to repay it to each of you in kind."

"I know. I still think you're asking for trouble with this, though. Loyalty is fine right up until you find yourself on the wrong side of the Empire – or the Republic, for that matter. I can't think of anyone who's in a worse position than Karrde right now."

"I know the risks, both personal and professional. My mind is still made up." He paused. "You'll do this for me, won't you?"

"Of course."

"Once Aves gets back things will improve, I think. Karrde trusts him and if Aves trusts you-"

"Are you telling me to get close to him?"

"That's rather calculating." He paused, considering. "But it couldn't hurt."

"Is that why you chose me for this?" she asked, not at all sure she liked the shrewd look on Billey's face. "Because you thought I'd be able to manipulate Aves, or Karrde – or both?"

He sighed. "You're a bit too smart for your own good, aren't you? Let's just say that having a woman in the mix is to our advantage, given... past history."

"Great," she said. "That's just great. You could have told me what I was walking into, you know."

"This is a temporary state. If I didn't believe that, I never would have gotten involved."

"I think you see too much of yourself in him."

"We're a lot alike."

"He's kind of a bastard," Zillah volunteered.

Billey chuckled again. "So am I – a tough old bastard."

"Why am I really here?" she said, getting the sense this would be her last chance to ask before he left. "Apart from the obvious?"

He leaned back in his chair, looking lost in memory. "You're here because I can't be."

* * *

His friendship with Aves was a strange one, Wedge was the first person to admit that. They'd saved each other's lives more than a few times, but it wasn't just that. Wedge had plenty of wingmen and brothers-in-arms already; Aves was something else altogether. There was just something about the guy; he found it nearly impossible to say no to him – even when the better, smarter, saner move was to do just that. It was a little like his friendship with Luke that way; a little like the way Han had been able to talk him into a series of borderline suicidal escapades over the years. It was like that, only more so.

After Bilbringi, right after, things had been good. They'd still been friendly with Karrde's group, so his own friendship with Aves had seemed like a natural extension of that. These days, though, things were decidedly different.

"Aves? Is that you?" he called into the evening shadows in the alley behind the Mumbri Storve cantina.

"Haven't I taught you anything?" a familiar voice said from behind him. "You never, never ask, 'Is that you?' Are you looking to get yourself killed?" Aves grinned at him, leaning up against the wall and folding his arms across his chest. "It's been a while since I saw the inside of this place."

"I was just thinking about how different things were back then."

"We didn't have to hide in alleys then, for one thing."

"Not from my side, at least. That Imperial spy was whole different story," Wedge said. "Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

Aves grinned even wider. "Better you don't know."

"You doing all right?"

"Same as always," he said.

"Is there anything I can-?"

"Nah." He shook his head. "I still owe you one for that business on Trogan..."

"I thought the bottle of whiskey made us even."

Aves laughed. "Well, then maybe I owe you one for the hangover."

"There is- There is something that maybe you can do for me..." Wedge began.

Aves raised an eyebrow, looking half-amused, half-hopeful. "Yeah, what's that?"

"Here's the thing. Bel Iblis- You remember Bel Iblis, don't you?"

He snorted. "Head honcho general? Sold us all down the river? Yeah, I remember him."

"The thing is, he wants to talk to Karrde and they asked me…"

But Aves was already shaking his head. "No. No way. It isn't going to happen." There was a long quiet moment. "I'm actually a little surprised you would even ask."

"I'm thinking of you, you know. The Republic might be able to help you-"

"Yeah, we've had our fill of their version of help."

"Come on, Aves. Maybe we haven't exactly been Karrde's best allies, but the Empire has been hell on you guys..."

"It's not like we're particularly safe on either side of the line these days," Aves said shortly.

"That's not fair-" Wedge began, but Aves cut him off.

"I'm certainly not blaming you for it. But it doesn't make life easy, you know? It doesn't make me want to do your bosses any favors." Aves, Wedge noticed for the first time, looked beyond tired, on the verge of complete exhaustion. There were fine lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn't been there the last time they met, thrown into sharp relief in the long evening shadows.

"You know I wouldn't ask unless it was extremely important-"

"I know, I know," he said, the hard lines in his expression softening a little when he looked at Wedge. "But face it, it's always something 'extremely important' with you people."

"This is-" Wedge cast around for the right words, to find a way to make Aves understand how potentially vital this was without giving away the whole story. "Look, I'm not supposed to get into details with anyone but Karrde..."

"But?"

Wedge shrugged. "Well, it's you, isn't it?"

Aves smiled at that, more of the tension easing from his face. "Yeah, it is."

"Karrde took something – something that he shouldn't have. It might be putting all of you in danger."

"More danger than we're normally in? I find that pretty hard to believe."

"Believe it," he said. "This thing- It's important, critical even, to the Republic. They'll be willing to deal, maybe take back some of the stuff that happened."

"I don't think there's any way to take it back. You guys cut us loose with Thrawn still gunning for us... We've lost a lot of good people because of it. It may be too late for forgiveness."

"But you're here with me," Wedge said. "That's something, right?"

"That doesn't have anything to do with the Republic or your war. This is personal, isn't it?"

Wedge looked at him for a long moment, considering, and found he wasn't entirely sure how to answer the question. "Just... think about it, at least. I can't make any specific promises, but it might make things better for all of you."

"It might," Aves admitted. "They certainly can't get much worse. I'll think about it, but I'm not making any promises, either."

* * *

When Thrawn's first strategic move came, Pellaeon almost didn't recognize it as such.

"Obroa-Skai, sir? Won't they be expecting that?"

"Let's simply call it... revisiting the scene of the crime," he said, with that frustratingly vague manner he adopted when he was playing something particularly close to the chest.

It wasn't just Obroa-Skai. They returned, systematically, to Sluis Van, to Honohgr, to Ukio, to Bpfass and, finally, to Bilbringi. Wayland, though, was noticeable by its absence.

They were at Bilbringi when Pellaeon finally summoned up the courage to ask why. The two of them sat alone in Thrawn's command room, reflected in the light from the displays – today showing shifting patterns and lines, apparently at random. If there was order to the proceeding, Pellaeon couldn't see it. He only hoped it meant something to Thrawn; he hoped all of this did. So he asked the question, and the Grand Admiral's only response was, "Wayland was an outlier, a special kind of failure. We'll get to it in time."

"Then what are we doing, sir?"

"Testing for weaknesses," Thrawn replied, not making eye contact, looking instead out at the shipyard, freshly repaired and gleaming under artificial lights. Whether the Rebellion's weaknesses or his own, he didn't specify.

They were gathering information, massive amounts of it, presumably for Thrawn to compare against the battle reports from before. Looking for what, Pellaeon didn't know – though he'd learned long ago not to second-guess the Grand Admiral.

The seemingly meaningless lines on the display suddenly resolved themselves into a sunburst of colors, ordered and perfect.

"Numbers," the Grand Admiral said, breaking the silence. "It's all going to come down to numbers."

"Sir?" Pellaeon dragged his gaze away from the image.

"I've always preferred art to numbers," Thrawn said thoughtfully, "but in this instance that may not serve me well. I'm discovering though..." He looked back to the sunburst image. "I'm discovering that there are ways to bring them together, new ways of looking at a problem." He folded his hands. "There is another matter, Captain, one that is a little more immediate..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Talon Karrde."

_That old business?_ Pellaeon thought, but didn't say. He'd largely considered the matter settled himself. It was only a question of time before they caught up with the smuggler, or one of his fringe compatriots simply did the deed for them – there were only so many places a man like that could hide.

But Thrawn said, "Our adversaries appear to have a renewed interest in him, so I believe we'd do well to do so ourselves."

"Do you have any idea why?"

Thrawn favored him with what passed for a smile on that rather alien face. "I always have ideas." The smile deepened. "Whether they're right is another matter altogether."

* * *

Things did, indeed, improve once Aves returned. Maybe not in quite the way Billey had intended, but Zillah wasn't about to question good fortune. Aves took to her immediately. She hadn't anticipated that; she'd expected to have to work at it, to work to prove herself.

Their initial introduction was hurried and brief, though, conducted literally on the run.

"Pick up the pace, Nadal," he was saying into a comlink as she entered. "I expect us off-planet in forty – forty-five at the most. Let's go."

"Aves?" Zillah ventured. "Karrde said you were expecting me." Then, "How can I help?"

"Keep up," he said, grabbing the cargo manifest and taking off down the corridor at a fast clip. She took off after him. "Billey's told me all about you, Maddoc. Glad to meet you," he said, grabbing her hand and shaking it quickly before looking back at the manifest.

"Are you?" she said with faint humor.

"At this point, I think I might take help from the Grand Admiral himself," he admitted with a grin.

"Nice to know I'm in good company, then." She smiled back. "And it's just Zillah – no one calls me by my last name."

"That's funny. No one calls me by my first name." He came to a stop at the entrance to the landing pit. "This is a joke, right? Billey's joking."

"About what? The ship?"

"Of course, the ship."

"I know it's an older model, but it's reliable – and not too likely to attract attention."

"Hmm," was all he said in return, walking up to it and kicking one of the landing skids.

"Really? This is how you test for space-worthiness?"

He turned and grinned at her. "Nah, just an old superstition."

"We're all loaded, boss," said one of the other men. Then, noticing Zillah, he said, "Well, hello there..."

"Don't call me 'boss,' Nadal," Aves said, "and put your eyes back in your head already. If anything, she's the boss."

"Oops," Nadal said, not looking at all sorry.

Aves followed him around to where the crew was rolling up the loading ramp. "In or out, Ghent," he said, and a skinny kid jumped down from one of the ladders and moved back a safe distance to watch them take off. "Let's get moving, folks," he said to the others, then offered Zillah his hand – a surprising gesture – and helped her up into the ship. Noticing her surprise, he added, "Hey, Karrde taught me _some_ manners."

"I'm impressed," she said, following him to the bridge and strapping in.

"Once we get airborne, I'll take you back and give you the grand tour. We've gotta get moving though – we're on a tight schedule."

"I'd noticed."

"Time is money, right?" he said, grinning at her again.

Once they cleared the planet, Nadal re-checked the pre-calculated jump, before glancing sidelong at Zillah and pulling the hyperspace levers. "You don't get spacesick, do you?"

"Never," she said, good-naturedly, shedding the restraints. "Flying in atmo is whole different story, though."

"I hear that."

"Come on," Aves said, unfolding himself from his chair. "I'll go introduce you to our load of contraband for this run."

"I hope you mean 'introduce' metaphorically," she said, following him off the bridge.

"I do. Karrde doesn't deal in people – with a few notable exceptions."

"It sounds like there's a story there."

"And how." He slapped the door release to the main cargo hold.

"Care to elaborate?"

"Once we hit Lazara, maybe I'll buy you a drink and give you the highlights. It's a doozy." The cargo hold was stacked with unmarked containers, and there was little room to maneuver. "This is where the real money is these days." He pulled down a couple selected cartons and opened them, revealing boxes of cigarettes, sweets, tea, booze and...

"Is that ladies' underwear?" she said, amused.

"Silk is a hot commodity in Imperial sectors right now. Almost all the production centers are in Republic space."

"I can safely say I never thought I'd see the day I started smuggling panties..."

He laughed, apparently totally at ease with her. She watched him for a long moment.

"What?" he said, noticing.

"You're friendlier than I expected. I'm a little surprised."

"What? I don't seem like a nice guy at first glance?"

She couldn't help smiling at that. "I guess I figured- I hope you don't feel like I'm here to displace you..."

"We're Karrde's right and left hands. Plenty of room for both of us," he said, grinning crookedly at her. There was something perpetually adolescent about him – tall and skinny, with hands that looked too big for the rest of his body. He smiled at her again, gesturing slightly with one hand. "It's funny, see, 'cause-"

"I get it."

"Hey, still just being friendly here."

She sat down on one of the cartons with a sigh. "I know, I'm sorry. I do appreciate it. I'm relieved, to be honest."

"Karrde giving you a tough time of it?"

"You might say that."

"It's not you," Aves said, looking suddenly serious and taking a seat beside her. "You need to know that; none of this is about you personally. Karrde's gotten pretty screwed over by the universe these past couple years. He's not going to trust anyone easily, not even someone that Billey trusts."

"What about someone you trust?"

The smile came back, but there was something else behind it. Indecision, maybe? "Depends on who it is, I guess. Are you trying to say that I can trust you, Zillah?"

"I'm just hoping you'll give me the chance to prove that you can."

"Billey trusts you. That's a good start for me. Billey's been solid for us all these years, even now. Most of the other big groups couldn't get away from us fast enough after whatever the hell went down on Wayland."

"Karrde's own people stayed, though – most of them, anyway."

"Yeah, they did. Karrde's cut from a different cloth than most of the people in this business. He's not someone you want to give up on easily."

"Clearly," she said, a little dryly. "We're all going to a lot of trouble for him."

"It's worth it," Aves said. "At the very least, I have to believe it is."

The trip to Lazara was a short one, a day trip only, and she couldn't quite shake the feeling that – whatever else he said – Aves was taking her out for a test drive. Asking her, in-between a steady stream of friendly banter, pointed questions about exactly what she did for Billey and how long she'd been doing it. Her suspicions were confirmed on the approach to Lazara itself.

"Why do don't you go get us set back there," Aves said to Nadal. "Zillah and I can handle the landing."

"You putting me to the test?" she asked, taking the seat Nadal vacated.

"Maybe a little," he admitted.

"And you got rid of the audience in case it turns out that I have no idea what I'm doing. That's nice of you."

"It's more that I didn't want you to feel like I was putting you on display."

"But you need to see me work," she said, nodding. "That's fair."

"Like I said, I'm glad of the help, but... This is a weird situation, you've gotta admit."

"You think it's weird for _you_?" she said, moving the ship into a standard approach. The truth was, she wasn't the best pilot – she didn't love it the way a truly gifted pilot needed to – but she could certainly manage a simple landing. Assuming, of course that it was simple. "Is there anything special I need to know about the landing pattern?"

"No, nothing special. Just maintain a normal approach until they tell you where to put down." There was a slight pause while Zillah got instructions from the main spaceport's flight control. "You haven't been to Lazara before? It's easy pickings," Aves said, leaning back in the pilot's chair. "I'm surprised."

"Billey doesn't operate in Imperial space, if he can help it. You know that."

"Yeah, I did. I'd forgotten, though." He paused. "You'd think he'd want to stick it to them..."

"That isn't really his style. Plus, there was the kid to consider. After Aud, and then his accident... I think he stopped taking risks the way he used to."

"The way I hear it, he barely even sees the kid."

"That doesn't mean he doesn't love her, that he doesn't want to be around to see her grow up – even if it's from far away."

Aves watched her closely for a minute. "Exactly how did you and Billey meet?"

"You mean, am I sleeping with him?" she supplied. "You can come right out and ask, if you're curious. I'm not sleeping with him, and I never would. I love him, just not that way."

"Sorry, the way you talked about him did make me curious. He's old enough to be your father – your grandfather even – but stranger things have happened."

"Don't be sorry. It's good to be aware of all the variables."

"Now you sound like Karrde," he said, with wry humor.

"Karrde's a smart guy."

"And Billey's taking a hell of chance by helping him, especially for someone who's decided to minimize his risks."

"Don't think I haven't reminded him of that repeatedly since he came up with this crazy idea."

"But you let him send you to us; you put your own skin in the game for him..."

She shrugged. "I told you – I love the guy." The ship settled softly into the landing pit with a slight sigh. It was a good landing, better even than she was usually capable of. "We're here."

"That we are," he said, watching her for another moment. Then, "Let's get to it."

The authorities on Lazara appeared completely aware of what they were up to, and also appeared not to care in the least.

"That's how it is with a lot of these Imperial worlds close to the line," Aves said, watching their contact haul off a large carton of ladies' unmentionables. "The black market is an open secret, totally essential to their way of life."

"That makes it easy for us."

"Which doesn't mean we should get lazy, either, but..."

"It's a nice change of pace?" She finished scrolling through the accounts. "It's all there. I'm routing it through Karrde's usual accounts, and then back to Salara where we can swap the credit out for hard currency."

"Good thinking. That's right on our way." He paused a moment, frowning at the palm-sized tablet she was working on. "Hard disk would be safer, though, you know – or at least an older datapad on a closed network. Anyone can track you on these new open feeds..."

"Not the way I do it," she said, closing down the connection and slipping the tiny datapad into her pocket. "I've had to drag Billey kicking and screaming into the present, but we haven't had a transfer tracked back to us yet. The money comes back cleaner, and the accounts are credited almost instantly."

"Okay, that's fair. We'll give your way a try." He grinned at her, seeming to relax a bit now that the job was done. "Now, how about that drink?"

"And the story you promised?"

"The edited version, sure."

"Now I'm really intrigued."

Over drinks at a somewhat questionable little bar in the spaceport, Aves told her the biggest whopper of a tale she'd heard in a long time – and that alone was saying something.

"I don't believe a word of it," she said, as he poured her a second (pretty awful) whiskey. "Not one word – especially not the part where some furry little tree worm can incapacitate a fully-trained Jedi."

"I swear on my mother's grave, it's all true – and that's only about the half of it."

"And the other half?"

He poured a drink for himself as well. "The other half is where it gets sticky. The other half is the personal stuff – mostly personal for Karrde, but a little bit for the rest of us, too."

"I understand from Billey that there was a woman-"

"Again, not even the half of it. Mara-" He stopped and shook his head. "Hell. Was there something going on with her and Karrde? Yeah, probably, but it's not my place to talk about it – and, anyway, that's only part of why he's so pissed off at the whole galaxy right now. There might be a way, though, to minimize some of the damage – assuming I can get Karrde to listen to me."

"And it's up to us to help him through it all, apparently," she said, taking a sip of whiskey, making a face and setting it back down again.

"In spite of himself, yeah," he said, distractedly. He was staring off into space, looking thoughtful.

"What?"

"I think I'm going to just have to take a chance and follow my instincts."

* * *

Six days later, Aves walked into the spaceport canteen at Abregado-rae, and right into an ambush. Wedge, at least, had the grace to look ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he said, as Aves sat down slowly, holding his hands up in surrender. "They followed me; they got here right before you did." He turned to the man next to him, who had the stink of Republic Intelligence all over him. "Can you put that thing down, Page? He's not going to run, and he's certainly not going to shoot anybody."

Page lowered his blaster. Without the muzzle of a blaster pointed at his solar plexus, Aves could finally focus on the booth's third occupant, a man who was very familiar...

"Well, this is unexpected," he said. "I didn't realize I rated a general himself."

Garm Bel Iblis sat forward, folding his hands. "Consider it a good faith gesture on our part."

"Except for the spook with the blaster pointed at my gut, of course."

"Good faith," Bel Iblis said, calmly, "but not stupid."

"I _am_ sorry," Wedge said, and Aves really, really wanted to believe that it hadn't been an intentional set-up.

"Karrde's not going to talk you," he said, cutting right to the chase. "Wedge has already tried to convince me, but it's just not going to happen. He thinks you're all a bunch of assholes, and, frankly, I'm starting to see his point..."

Page twitched, just perceptibly, like he really wanted his blaster back in his hand. Wedge, for his part, looked fairly miserable. Bel Iblis, though, said simply, "I understand why you might feel that way, considering that you don't yet have all the facts."

"And you're going to enlighten me?"

"Given his attitude so far, I'm not sure we should-" Page began, still looking like he'd rather have Aves in binders for this conversation.

"Tell him," Bel Iblis said, with the look of a man calculating risks and rewards. "All of it. We've come all this way, we have to tell him." He looked at Aves. "Consider it another gesture of good faith."

Aves looked to Wedge, who inclined his head just slightly. _Trust them, at least for now; let them talk._

"You already know that Wayland was a storehouse for all the Emperor's nasty little goodies – and some not so little ones..." Page said.

"Yeah, and-?"

"Well, the thing you don't know – the thing that almost no one outside of Intelligence and the higher levels of the military knows – is that Thrawn's people had made a pretty good dent in clearing that warehouse out by the time we got there."

"How big a dent?"

"Not counting the cloning technologies? A little more than half."

"So Thrawn is running around out there with half the Emperor's gadgets and other nasty surprises?"

"Yes, but that's actually not the worrying part."

"It's not?"

"Believe it or not," Bel Iblis cut in, "it isn't. You'd assume that since we captured the mountain, that we have access to the inventories of exactly what was there in the first place." He folded his hands again, and Aves nodded, feeling a bit like he was a kid back in school. "That assumption would be wrong. The remaining Imperial troops there wiped the database and destroyed the hard drives before we could get to them – completely unrecoverable."

"So there's no record. You know Thrawn has something, just not exactly what it is."

"Exactly. The captured troops have been less than forthcoming about what was there, to the point that I'm of the opinion that they never actually knew." Page made a noise of disagreement, but Bel Iblis ignored him.

_Mara_, Aves thought. Mara would have known. She would have pulled an itemized list out of that crazy scary memory of hers, and Karrde would have politely blackmailed the Republic with the info and gotten them all out of this mess. Too late for that now, though. Not for the first time, Aves felt a flash of anger at Mara for going and getting herself killed like that.

"That's not to say, though, that the information doesn't exist anywhere. We think it does, and that's where you come in."

"Somebody accessed that data before the Imperials wiped it," Page took over again. "Somebody using a remote terminal in Section G-867 at around 1800 hours. We only know of three people who were in the vicinity during that timeframe: Skywalker, Mara Jade and Karrde. Skywalker didn't do it, and Jade is dead... so, logically, it's a pretty good bet it was Karrde."

"It fits, too," Bel Iblis said, "with what I've seen of the man. I doubt he could have resisted the information. It's not just valuable from a monetary standpoint, it's a window into one of the most terrible and compelling minds of the last age..."

Aves swallowed hard. That did sound like something Karrde would be unable to turn down.

"As far as we can tell, Thrawn doesn't know he has it – but if he ever figures it out..."

Aves ran a nervous hand through his hair. "If he does, then we're fucked... sir. I mean, if you'll excuse the expression... General, sir."

Wedge rolled his eyes at Aves's floundering, but Bel Iblis just smiled grimly. "Son, I'd say that's a pretty fair assessment of the situation.

"I don't suppose it would pay to ask whether there's anything good in the half of the Emperor's loot that your side has...?"

Bel Iblis actually grunted a laugh at that. "Let's just say we have one or two tricks up our sleeve. The problem, of course, is that Thrawn knows we have them – so we're going to have to get creative."

Versus the most brilliant tactical genius the galaxy had seen since the Clone Wars, if not before. Stellar. "Well, good luck with that, I guess."

To Aves's surprise, Bel Iblis laughed again. "I can see why Antilles likes you. Try not to squander our trust in you."

Easier said than done. "You realize that if Karrde finds out I was here, talking to you official types, that he might just bounce me out of his group altogether? If not worse?"

"You really think Karrde would do that?" Wedge said softly.

"I don't know. Two or three years ago, no. He'd give me what-for for making a stupid mistake, but he'd give me another chance. These days, though? He's..." Aves struggled for a moment to find the right words. "He's less predictable than he used to be, and he wasn't always all that predictable to start with."

"But you'll ask? You'll approach him on our behalf?"

"No promises," he said, and noticed that Wedge's face had fallen even further.

"Come on, Aves," he said. "Take the help we're offering."

"That's not my call to make. I'll consider the situation, I'll consider your offer, and if I think it's worth Karrde's while, I'll bring the matter to his attention."

"I suppose that's the best we're going to get," Bel Iblis said.

"For now," Aves agreed. Then, with a dark look at Page, "I assume I'm still free to go?"

"Yes, of course. We'll be in touch..."

Aves stood. "Don't bother pulling this trick again." His eyes met Wedge's. "I won't be quite so easy to catch next time." He turned his back on them as he left, half-expecting a blaster bolt between the shoulder blades. After a moment, though, all he could hear was footsteps behind him – not pursuing, exactly, but definitely heading his direction. He was pretty sure he knew who it was, so he left his weapon in its holster.

"Hey," Wedge said, catching up to him just outside the front entrance, and taking him by the arm. "Hey, I'm sorry."

Aves shook his head. "That was shitty of you, Wedge. I'm not sure I want your apologies."

"I really didn't know they'd be here. _Really_."

"You could have warned me off..."

"I could have," he admitted, his hand still on Aves's arm. "I could have, but I didn't. I really do think you should help them. I think you should use this situation to your advantage."

"Well, I guess I have the answer to my question, then."

"Question?" Wedge said, looking confused.

"The last time we saw each other, I asked you if this was personal and you didn't answer me. Today made it pretty damned clear – it's not." Somehow, he'd closed what little bit of distance there was between them. Wedge, though, didn't move back, didn't try to reestablish his personal space.

Instead, he simply said, "That isn't true. You are my friend." He paused. "I'd like to think that cooperating would make things a little safer for you out there. I don't want to see you get hurt."

"It's a little late for that now, isn't it?" Aves said, pulling away and walking off, leaving Wedge behind him.

* * *

"How was beautiful, sunny Abregado?" Solo asked, sitting behind Bel Iblis's desk, his feet propped up on the desk again despite repeated requests for him not to do that.

"Less productive than I might have hoped." Bel Iblis shooed Solo out of his chair, and Solo smirked at him. "What a terrible planet."

"There's a little bar off the main drag in the capital that serves the best chops outside of Coruscant – but, other than that, you're right. It stinks." He retreated to the chair opposite Bel Iblis. "So, Karrde's boy told you to go pound sand, eh?"

"Can you just say 'I told you so' and get it over with already, so we can move on to other business?"

"I _did_ tell you..."

Bel Iblis leaned back in his chair. "So you did, and now I've admitted that you were right."

"Shouldn't you be more upset about not getting that list? Especially with Thrawn going almost entirely silent the past few weeks, like the calm before one hell of a storm." Solo frowned. "What aren't you telling me?"

"It's just a hunch."

"I've gambled my life on less. Let's hear it."

"Thrawn is legendary for being unpredictable. What's the least predictable thing he could do in this situation?"

Solo raised an eyebrow, getting it immediately. "Not use any of it?"

"Exactly. At least not yet, and maybe not for a while, not until he really needs to."

"So what, then? What would you do if you were him?"

Bel Iblis chuckled. "I don't pretend to be a tactical genius on that level – and I certainly hope I'm not that insufferable about my own cleverness... But I think he just grinds us down to a comfortable level – a war of attrition. He still has numbers enough to do it, but it'll be a close thing, if he tries."

"And once he softens us up a little, then he springs whatever nasty surprises he has waiting in the wings?"

Bel Iblis shrugged. "You asked what I would do..."

Solo grinned at him. "You are cut from similar cloth, aren't you?" Off Bel Iblis's frown, though, he said, "Not nearly as insufferable, though, I promise." There was a short pause. "Even if you're right, we still need that list."

"Of course. No sense in being so clever we out-clever ourselves." Bel Iblis paused, considering. "I don't think all is lost on that front, either. Antilles might still be our way in. We overplayed the hand, but I don't think the damage was irreparable."

"We'll see. Smugglers have long memories."

"True. I get the sense, though, that, much like his boss, our friend Aves isn't entirely a typical smuggler."

"Maybe," Solo replied, not seeming particularly convinced. Then, looking like he didn't really want to broach the subject, he said, "If this really is just a numbers game, then eventually we're going to have to decide-"

"Whether to use the cloning facility for ourselves," Bel Iblis finished, thinking suddenly of Tovah Medyoff and all her talk about their 'better selves.' "I know."

Solo shook his head. "I kind of wish we'd blown the whole place to hell while we had the chance."

"Then we'd really be in trouble," Bel Iblis replied, but in his gut he agreed – at least mostly.


	4. Initial Conditions

**4. Initial Conditions**

Bilbringi was fixed in his memory as the crisis point. Aves hadn't been at Wayland, a fact he still wasn't sure whether to be thankful for or not, so it was Bilbringi instead that stood out to him as the moment it all started to go to hell.

The irony, of course, was that they'd actually won at Bilbringi.

The Republic had, anyway, with a healthy assist from them – which made what the Repubs had ultimately done to repay them all the shittier. They'd left the shipyard gutted behind them, the Imperials retreating in controlled chaos while one of their biggest strategic assets burned away into the vacuum of space.

"That," Wedge said over the comm, as they booked it out of there, "was awesome."

"Completely," said one of the other X-Wing pilots, whose designation completely escaped Aves. He never could make heads or tails of the Repubs' military structure, or lack thereof. "Not a bad day's work."

"Aves," Wedge said, "you and your team should follow us out. You can regroup with the fleet, and then head wherever it is you need to go. It'll be safer than way."

"I don't know..." he began. He could feel Gillespee and Faughn watching him closely.

"Aves, don't even think about it..." Mazzic cut in. Apparently, he'd been listening on this channel the whole time. Aves ought to have known.

"Come on, we'll feed you the coordinates," Wedge said, ignoring him. "The Republic owes you a proper thank you."

"What? You gonna pin a medal on us?"

He could practically hear Wedge grinning through the feed. "It's not so bad once you get used to it."

Aves had gone, and taken the others with him, over Mazzic's protests. Only the idea that the Republic military was likely to show its appreciation in some tangible fashion finally shut him up.

"They'd better pay up," Mazzic had said, glowering, while they stood in one of the Republic's wide hangars on Azorr, the regular troops giving them a wide berth and the guards giving them the stink-eye. Aves had never seen a landing facility so clean, even the fixtures gleamed like new – which, he supposed, given that the Republic itself had only existed for a couple years, they probably were.

"They will. Keep your pants on."

"Ha, you wish," Mazzic muttered back.

Wedge caught sight of them from across the hangar, jumping down from his X-Wing and crossing the distance between them. "There you are!" He grabbed Aves enthusiastically, half-embrace and half-handshake. "Man, am I glad to see you all in one piece."

"I'm glad to be in one piece, and glad to see to you, too." Aves grinned at him. "It looks like you aren't going to be forgetting us this time."

"How could I? That platform blowing to hell and back is one of the more spectacular things I've seen lately..."

"We didn't think it was going to make quite such a big boom, but I'm not complaining."

"The Empire might have some complaints to register, though. Hey, let me buy you a drink." He grinned around at Mazzic and Gillespee. "Hell, I'll buy the whole lot of you drinks."

"I was under the impression," Mazzic said coolly, "that we were here to discuss compensation?"

"Oh, of course. But surely that can wait? Folks here want to celebrate. All the rest of that stuff can keep until morning..."

Aves grimaced. "I think Mazzic here is in a bit of a hurry to get back."

"Okay, okay," Wedge said. "Admiral Drayson is here somewhere. I'm sure he can-"

"Mazzic," Aves said, reconsidering, "today was rough. Have a drink, get your money in the morning."

"I don't trust-"

"You can," Wedge said, his exuberance fading a little. "You'll get repaid for your trouble. I can promise you that."

"Great," Aves said. "Now everyone's happy. Let's go have that drink with our new friends."

In better times, Azorr, with its wide beaches and long seasons, had been a popular vacation spot. Since then, its strategic location made it prime real estate for military bases, both Republic and Imperial. The Repubs had it these days. They'd pounded the Imperial outposts to dust, right after Endor, hit them hard and then paved over the wreckage, leaving those key stretches of coastline on the main continent looking unspoiled and outwardly peaceful.

There were remnants of those better days along the waterfront – seafood shacks and knickknack shops, once-glossy nightclubs faded from their former glory. They wound up in a little beachside bar, one that was clearly designed to cater to military clientele.

"You come here often?" Aves asked, casting a leery eye around the place. It was a dump – and he'd been a smuggler for a while now, he knew from dumps.

"This place is a total dive," Wedge said. "But..." The bartender produced a bottle with a flourish. "It's the only place this side of Selonia that stocks this."

"Am I supposed to know what that is?"

"If you did," he said with a grin, "I'd be impressed." He took charge of the bottle, popping the top and pouring a careful measure into each of the glasses the bartender had lined up on the bar. "Corellians tend to keep the best for themselves, and export the rest. This stuff doesn't usually make it this far from home."

They made a motley crew at the bar – half fighter jocks, still looking spit-shined and straight-laced, even out of uniform; half men of apparently questionable morals, looking exactly the opposite. Still, they'd found some common ground; had found a way to work together. It made Aves happy somehow, like this was the shape of things to come.

They'd had one hell of a good day.

"Thank you," Wedge said, raising his glass and looking around at their strange little group. "I know you had your individual reasons, but what you did out there made a real difference."

"Here, here," one of the other pilots said. "Couldn't have done it without you."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," said another, "but it would have been a hell of a lot harder."

Gillespee laughed at that, seeming to warm up to them a little thanks to the promise of free booze. "Here's to being useful, then."

Glasses clinked together and a good two-thirds of them knocked the drink back immediately – and promptly choked.

"Sip it!" Wedge said, with a laugh. "Slowly. It's not very forgiving if you don't take the time to enjoy it."

"Hot damn," Aves said, pounding a fist against his chest. Wedge put a hand on his back, still laughing.

They'd finished the first bottle in record time, and somehow he and Wedge had wound up side-by-side, sharing a second, sitting on the beach close to the water's edge.

"You fellas throw a decent party," Aves said.

"It's not Endor, but I'm not complaining."

"A party with Ewoks? I'll pass, thanks."

"I could have done without the Ewoks myself, but it was a hell of a night," he said, passing the bottle back to Aves. "This is a big deal," he continued after a moment. "We needed a win. We were starting to lose hope. It was starting to feel like all the years of fighting, all the people we'd sacrificed, like it was all for nothing."

Aves took a drink, looking out at the water. "I can't even imagine."

"I'm glad you can't. No one should have to."

Aves had tended, back then, to think of Wedge as nice enough, but just another starry-eyed kid who'd lucked into the right side of a stupid war. So it gave him something of a jolt to look into the other man's eyes and see something familiar there – a weary bitterness, like he was tired of the whole universe. Wedge hid it well – under a kind of boyish, nice-guy charm – but that night the whiskey had stripped away a little of the surface, providing a glimpse into some of the battle scars underneath.

"That's rotten. I'm sorry."

"You get used to it, but there's a limit, you know?" he said, sounding like an old man. Then again, Aves himself was only a few years older, and most days he felt pretty ancient. At least Wedge had something to show for the damage.

"Well, let's do our best to make sure it doesn't all go down the shitter. How does that sound?" Aves said, standing and offering Wedge a hand up.

Wedge laughed and slung an arm across his shoulders, both of them a little less than graceful on their feet by that point. "You hang around blowing up enough Imperial bases, and we might just have a chance at that."

"No promises on that one – but if you're in trouble, you can always call."

They stumbled back toward the base, a few paces behind the other pilots, who'd begun by that point to sing a very off-color song.

"Kids these days, right?" Aves said. "Can't handle their liquor."

Wedge gave him a grin, laughed, and slung an arm around him again... which was interesting. Aves had been around enough to know that he probably wasn't putting any particular signals out there on purpose – just friendly and open, not to mention pretty heroically drunk – but it was kind of nice to pretend. He put an arm around Wedge's waist in return, and just went with it.

"We're not exactly old fossils yet, you know," Wedge said. "I should be so lucky."

"You and me both."

"Hey, Wedge," one of the pilots said from up ahead of them. "What do you say to a quick game of cards?"

They crossed the threshold into the hangar, and Wedge groaned. "I feel bad enough taking your money while you're sober..."

"Oh, very funny," the pilot – Janson, maybe? Aves would get them straight eventually – said.

"Cards?" That was Gillespee, bringing up the rear and sounding way too excited about the prospect.

"Oh, boy," Aves said softly.

"Trouble?" Wedge asked.

"Maybe. Is your boy any good?"

"Not too bad."

"He'll be okay, then – just as long as they don't let Faughn play."

"How come?"

"She cheats."

"She does not," Gillespee said, overhearing, "cheat."

"Maybe it's not technically cheating, but she does have an unfair advantage..."

"And what's that?" Wedge asked, looking amused.

"One hell of a nice rack, and a very tight tank top."

"Manners, Aves," Gillespee said, but didn't deny it.

"Sure, you haven't got any problem with it. She cuts you in."

"On the winnings or the rack?" Wedge asked, and Gillespee actually laughed.

"I like you, kid. I'll try not to take too much of your money."

"I think I'm going to pass," Wedge said.

"Yeah, me too," Aves said. He let go and Wedge swayed ominously on the spot. _Ah, mystery solved._ He could barely stand up by himself. He put a hand on Aves' shoulder and managed to stay upright.

"Have it your way," Gillespee said, following the others toward Mazzic's ship.

"I need the galaxy's biggest glass of water and then some sack time..." Wedge began. "Ah, hell. I am old, aren't I?"

"Old before your time, one of the perils of living an interesting life..."

Wedge, though, had stopped short, frowning at an empty hangar slot. "What the hell? Where is she?"

"Uh, where is who?"

"Oh, there she is!" he said, sounding crazy relieved, and headed toward his fighter. Another mystery solved. They'd moved Wedge's X-Wing deeper into the hangar, putting it next to the smuggling ships, between them and the other fighters like a shield.

"Gee, are they afraid we have something catching?" Aves asked, but Wedge wasn't listening. He was looking at the ship the way a kid looks at his best girl. They walked in between the fighter and the _Starry Ice._ He could hear Torve and Silas through the freighter's open hatchway, probably bitching about having to stay behind and keep an eye on things. He frowned at the X-Wing. "I don't get it, you know. They're flying deathtraps. One good tap from a TIE and it's good night, flyboy."

"You ever flown one? It's better than-" Wedge laughed. "Well, it's pretty damned amazing. You should try it. Let me take you up there sometime, and I'll change your mind."

He leaned Wedge up against the side of the freighter, laughing at him. "When you can stand up under your own power, maybe we'll talk."

"Hey, Aves..." It was Torve, leaning out the hatch, a frown on his face. "Got a message you need to see." Then, taking in the scene, "Aw, damn it. You're plastered. This is just what I need..."

Something in his tone set off red flags for Aves. "What?"

"It's the boss," Torve said, "and it's not good."

"Aves?" someone said then, sounding far away. He frowned. Something didn't quite fit. "Hey, get up." That same someone shook him by the shoulder, and he realized that he must be asleep, dreaming memories.

He jerked awake abruptly to find Zillah, stripped down to her skivvies, standing beside his bunk. "You're up," she said, "and I'm toast. My turn to sleep."

"Ah, shit," he said, rubbing his palms over his face. He actually felt worse than before he'd gone to bed.

"You okay?" she asked, looking pretty worn out herself.

"I hate sleeping in hyperspace," he said, sitting up. "It gives me weird dreams."

"That's an old superstition."

"I'm an old-fashioned superstitious guy."

She shook her head at him, but smiled nonetheless. "It's my turn. Get out."

"You could always join me." He waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Oh, yeah. You're a charmer," she said dryly. "Now move it." She slapped him on the thigh, and started to crawl into the bunk as he exited.

"Hey." He stopped her with a hand on her arm, thinking suddenly, for some reason, about his dream. "You said I could trust you."

She stopped short, sitting down beside him on the edge of the mattress. "And?"

"There's somebody else that I want to trust, but-"

Zillah raised an eyebrow. "Someone special, I take it."

"Yes... Wait, what? No." He actually felt his face warm. _Hell._ "What I mean is..." he said, pulling it together. He was still about as pissed as could be at Wedge for that stunt on Abregado, but it was all tangled up with these other emotions that he couldn't quite control. "This person might be able to help us, but I'm not sure it's the kind of help Karrde would accept."

"What kind of help are we talking about here?"

"Official help. New Republic help."

Zillah shook her head. "I don't think that's a very good idea. I don't know the details of Karrde's history with the Republic government, but it sounds like things got ugly." She paused. "Even if there wasn't past history there, I probably still wouldn't trust them."

"I don't trust them, but-"

"You trust this friend of yours?" She pulled the lumpy pillow into her lap and hugged it to her. "Okay- so say this person is trustworthy. Who says the rest of the Republic is going to be?"

"They don't have a particularly good track record of keeping their word. But if this friend of mine is to be believed..." He ran a distracted hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in messy spikes. "We could be in big trouble..."

"Tell me something I don't already know..."

"No, I mean _big_ trouble. Not just the usual Empire generally gunning for us trouble, something specific and really, really bad. Something bad enough to kick us right to the top of the Grand Admiral's priority list."

She looked at him closely. "Bad enough to keep you from getting a good night's sleep, apparently. But you can't tell me what it is...?"

"I think the fewer people who know, the better – at least until I can get Karrde to tell me if it's true."

She frowned, looking even more tired than she had when she'd come in.

"Hey, you know what- Get some sleep. This can keep."

"Are you sure?"

"No," he admitted. "But there's not much we can do about it from here. When we get back, I'll talk to Karrde."

"Okay," she said, still frowning, but she lay back in the nest of blankets he'd just vacated. Without thinking, he reached down to pull the covers up around her. She rolled her eyes at him. "Are you everybody's big brother, or just mine? Go, before Silas and Nadal push the wrong button and blow us straight to hell."

"All right, all right," he said, standing up and grabbing his clothes. He crammed himself into the little washroom, obscurely missing the _Starry Ice_, and splashed water on his face, attempting to clear the last of the sleep fog from his brain. Zillah was already fast asleep when he emerged. Apparently, she had that knack for sleeping anytime, anywhere, given the chance – a skill that was pretty useful in this line of work, but one that he'd never quite mastered himself. He pulled the blanket up over her again as he walked past the bunk and she frowned slightly in her sleep.

The next few hours were mercifully uneventful, though he did find his mind occasionally wandering from the task at hand. His thoughts kept drifting back to Bilbringi, to Abregado, to the alley behind the Mumbri Storve cantina. Once they hit the planet, he decided, he was really going to have do something about this. He hadn't been much in the mood to talk to Wedge the last few weeks, but he couldn't just let it keep bugging him like this.

"Aves?" Nadal said. "I've got a message incoming for you, personal encrypt, high priority. Where do you want it?"

"Main terminal is fine," he said, and then froze as he keyed it up.

The message wouldn't have meant much to anyone else – a single line of text, apparently gibberish. But to Aves... It was the emergency code, the one Karrde would only use if he was in immediate and personal danger, the signal to run for the hills and regroup. He'd come up with it after that business with Mara and the _Etherway_, after Thrawn had gotten to him the first time.

"Damn it," he said aloud, and that didn't even begin to cover it.

"Problem?" Silas asked.

"Get Zillah."

"Come on, boss. She's asleep. She'd been up since we left Salara..."

"Wake her up. Get her up here now." He turned to Nadal. "Drop us out of hyperspace, and pull up a pre-calculated jump for me. It's hard-keyed into the system, and passcode protected. The code is Charlie Red Zulu 55487."

Nadal complied, the stars resolving themselves into bright white pinpoints as he dropped the ship into sublight, then said, "We in deep shit?"

"Probably."

Zillah appeared, not looking particularly rested, her hair pulled untidily away from her face. He didn't even have to speak, she took one look at his face and seemed to know what was up. She joined him at the terminal and said softly, "I assume we have some sort emergency back-up plan for the whole group?"

"Already underway. We're headed off to meet up with the _Dawn Beat_, and then jump through about three more checkpoints before we finally head to the back-up base – and, hopefully, all the others will make it there, too."

She put a hand on his arm. "Is Karrde okay?"

"I don't know. There was no other message."

"One of us should have been with him," she said, worrying her lip with her front teeth. "He keeps pushing me off on you, because he doesn't trust me. He doesn't want to have to deal-"

"It's his choice. He's the boss."

"We can't let him keep doing this. He might be the boss, but we're responsible for him."

"No argument there – assuming he's still around for us to gang up on."

"Well," she said, as the ship began to pick up speed again, running through the sequence for lightspeed, "let's assume for now that he is – and when we get to him, we're going to have to have a serious talk about this arrangement."

* * *

Smugglers, as a group, tended to be highly superstitious. Karrde had long been an exception to that rule, though just at the moment he was reconsidering his stance on the matter. Most smugglers, for instance, wouldn't have gone back to a planet where they'd been caught by a squad of Imperials – and they certainly wouldn't let themselves be slotted into the same landing pit. Karrde, though, tried to ignore the little tinge of uneasiness, of doubt. It was just bad memories making the place seem dangerous, he told himself as the _Wild Karrde_ settled to the pavement, it wasn't logical at all.

"You shouldn't go out there alone, boss," Dankin said, clearly remembering the last time they'd been there, too.

"It'll be all right," he said, unstrapping himself from the seat and standing up. "You see anybody out there?"

"Not yet. Mazzic's here, though, like he promised. The landing logs show him coming in about an hour ago. They've got him two pits over."

"So he probably saw us land." He keyed for the hatch release.

"Boss," Dankin said, pressing the issue, "I really think you ought to-"

"I'm just going to talk to Mazzic. Everything will be fine," he said, and stepped out into the landing pit.

The sun was out. It had been overcast the last time he'd been there. He remembered looking up at Mara, the sky behind her flat and grey.

_Don't_, she'd said then, taking his weapon away from him easily. _I can get you out of this; I can get us out __of this._

He should have wanted her dead then, should have wanted to kill her with his bare hands. In that moment, though, the betrayal hadn't bothered him that much – he'd had the sense from the beginning that she'd been running a long game, though, admittedly, he hadn't thought of himself as the mark.

He didn't get truly angry with her until later, when the whole truth had come out and he realized just how much she'd been keeping from him, how explosive her secrets really were.

"There you are, Karrde," Mazzic said, standing in the exact same shadow Karrde had chosen for his own hiding place back then.

"Mazzic," Karrde replied in greeting, allowing himself a cursory look up at the sky before crossing the landing pit toward him. "Any reason you chose this particular place for a meeting?"

Mazzic frowned at him. "I was in the neighborhood." He paused. "Any reason I shouldn't have?"

"No, none at all. Just getting superstitious in my old age, I guess."

"Old age?" Mazzic laughed. "If you're old, then I'm ancient – and Ellor and Billey are practically fossilized."

"Maybe it's not just the years," Karrde admitted. Mazzic shook his head, still smiling, and Karrde couldn't help noticing that this was the closest to friendly they'd been in longer than he cared to acknowledge. He was more than a little ashamed to admit it, but it made him suspicious. "I'm led to understand that you have some information to sell?" he said, attempting to keep his tone friendly and respectful, and succeeding for the most part.

"Not to sell," Mazzic said, "just to share."

The whisper of suspicion in the back of Karrde's mind dialed the volume up to a full-throated roar. "To share?"

"Look," Mazzic said, "this isn't worth much to anyone but you. Consider it a favor, and you can owe me one."

"Hmm," was all Karrde said in reply.

"The word is out from Thrawn's people. They've upped the ante on finding you – and it was pretty high already."

Karrde raised an eyebrow. "How high?"

"Seventy-five."

He whistled softly. In another life, he would have been impressed by that – maybe even a little proud. "And you're just freely passing this information on..."

Mazzic frowned darkly. "I know you think the rest of us sold you out – maybe that's even a little bit true – but just because I didn't want to get my ass shot off for you, it doesn't mean I want Thrawn to catch up with you."

"So this is a goodwill gesture?"

Mazzic shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "Yeah, I guess you could call it that. The others... None of the others wanted to tell you – except Gillespee, of course, but he's gone to ground in some shit-town in the back of beyond. It didn't seem right to me. If the situation was reversed, you would have told me." He smiled grimly. "You would have used it to your advantage, but you would have told me. You'd never have left me twisting in the wind."

"That's true," Karrde said. "A little less than flattering, but true." He paused. "The others knew you were going to seek me out and tell me?" he asked, feeling a sudden uncomfortable thrill of apprehension. He looked at the sky again.

"Come on, Karrde. You can't really think that any of our old crew would go running to Thrawn, can you? They might sell you to the Republic, but not Thrawn. Not after everything."

"They might not have had a choice," he said, thinking of Mara, her hand on his wrist, pleading softly with him not to fight back and get himself killed, while a pair of stormtroopers hauled him to his feet and into a shuttle. Maybe he shouldn't have listened to her, maybe he should have just ended things then – on his own terms.

He realized that he'd fallen silent and Mazzic was watching him, an odd expression on his face.

"What is it?"

Mazzic shook his head. "I was just remembering the first time you and I ever worked together. Remember that? Aud was running a grift on that dimwitted lieutenant of Jabba's... What did she call it?"

In spite of himself, Karrde smiled. "The Corellian Two-Step..."

Mazzic smiled back. "Right, and she needed two 'nice-looking boys with good heads on their shoulders' to sell the bit. Was Jabba ever pissed. Served him right, though." He paused. "That was right after she and Billey met. I'd never seen him struck dumb over a girl before... I'd never seen him struck dumb over _anything_ before. That was a hell of a thing, wasn't it?"

"It was," Karrde agreed. It felt like a lifetime ago, or remembering something that had happened to someone else.

"How sad is it that I've begun to think of those as 'the good old days?'"

Mazzic wasn't the only one, but Karrde didn't say that. "Maybe we are getting old." Then, "Thank you for the information. I won't forget it." The implication, of course, being that if this was legit, Karrde owed him one – and if it wasn't... well, Karrde wouldn't forget that either. The threat, though, was fairly half-hearted, and Mazzic gave him a wry smile like he knew it.

"Let's hope I don't have to do it again," he said, and was gone.

Karrde headed back to the ship, managing to only glance at the sky twice on the way. He still couldn't quite shake the feeling of unease, but pushed it down and held it there. He'd been led around by his emotions enough lately; he wasn't going to give in this time.

"Now can we get out of here?" Dankin asked, fingers already dancing over the controls, keying the rapid-sequence start-up even as the hatch closed behind Karrde.

"Now we can go," Karrde confirmed, Dankin breathing a sigh of relief as they got underway.

Karrde leaned back in his chair, only peripherally aware of the activity around him. His crew was good, and this was a routine take-off.

_Seventy-five thousand_, he reflected. There was really only one reason for Thrawn to have raised the stakes that high, though how he'd found out about what Karrde had was hard to guess. He needed to tell Aves about the bounty, at least, if not the rest of it. He needed to tell Aves, and Billey. Though, he thought with brief bitterness, he supposed all he would have to do was tell Maddoc and she'd save him the trouble.

They cleared the planet a few minutes behind Mazzic's ship, leaving orbit just in time to see a squad of Imperial fighters come screaming around the planet's largest moon.

"Um, that's not good," Corvis said from the co-pilot's chair.

"That would be an understatement," Dankin replied, with a half-glance back at Karrde.

"Play it cool," he said with more ease than he actually felt. "Let's see what they're up to."

What they were up to, apparently, was chasing Mazzic.

"Now can we get worried?"

Karrde ignored that. "Are we far enough out of orbit to make the jump now?"

"About two more minutes..."

That was risky, but it would also give them a front-row view of whatever it was the Imperials had planned for Mazzic. Sending fighters after him indicated that they were more interested in search-and-destroy than capturing him or his people alive, unless...

There it was – a Star Destroyer, one of the newer, lighter models coming out of the newly rebuilt shipyards at Bilbringi, but a Star Destroyer nonetheless. The fighters were herding Mazzic toward it, the big ship already activating its tractor beam.

"Make sure we get an ID on that Star Destroyer," he said, and Dankin gave him a look but did it anyway.

The stars outside the ship blurred and Mazzic's ship disappeared behind them, winking into the darkness of hyperspace. Karrde sat back, folding his hands, caught somewhere between relief that they'd managed to slip away unnoticed and the grim realization that his gut had been right this time.

Maybe there was something to those superstitions, after all.

* * *

"Shit," Dankin said, his hands shaking on the controls. Somehow he managed to make the curse sound like an 'I told you so.'

"Calm down." They'd dropped out of hyperspace a good distance from the system, the rest of the crew snapping efficiently into emergency protocols, leaving Karrde alone on the bridge with Dankin.

"Boss, I get that you like to imagine yourself as a one cool customer, but if there was ever a time to panic? It's now."

"We're safe for the moment, at any rate. Whether we stay that way is another matter altogether." Karrde reached for his display and keyed for the encrypted emergency signal. "But we have to play it smart."

"Sure," Dankin said wryly. "We've been real good at 'smart' lately."

Karrde pulled up the hard-coded jump to the pre-arranged emergency checkpoint. If all went well, the _Fallow_ would already be waiting for them there, and then the _Etherway _and the _Ort_ at the next one. Hopefully, Aves would make it to the _Dawn Beat_ and the others in time to keep panic from setting in. The last thing they needed was for anyone to do something stupid. "We're going to rendezvous with the others..."

"And then?" Dankin asked, looking like he knew the answer but was hoping against hope he was wrong.

"After that, we're going to see about popping Mazzic out of whatever Imperial prison he's landed in – assuming he's still alive, of course."

"Boss-"

"No argument. Until and unless something changes, that's the plan." Just why it seemed so important to go after Mazzic wasn't entirely clear. Maybe it was the memory of his own time as an unwilling guest of Grand Admiral Thrawn, maybe it had simply been a long time since anyone had bothered to do him a real favor. Either way, it was hard not to feel like history was repeating itself.

At least this time, there was no danger of Mara happening again, he thought as they shifted easily back into lightspeed. She'd been his biggest mistake, his gravest miscalculation. What made it worse was that he was pretty sure that he'd do it all again – even knowing what he knew now.

It had been just like this before, on the run from the Imperials, nothing to do in the perpetual night of hyperspace but think – or, in Mara's case, try not to think.

The first time it happened they'd been three days off Rishi, trying desperately to put a few light-years between them and the Empire's bounty hunters. Throughout the trip Mara had kept insisting nothing was wrong, even though he could hear her uneven breathing, fighting sleep, from two bunks over. If it continued, he'd promised himself, he was going to pull rank and insist that she get someone to look at her.

As it turned out, he didn't get the chance.

Their back-up base was an abandoned farming compound on a rural planet at the edges of the Outer Rim. The main house was old and large with rough-hewn wood floors, far outside of the nearest town and neatly hidden from casual view. They'd only been there a day or two, everyone still keyed-up and tensions running high, when things had come to a head. Looking back, he knew it was mostly his fault – he'd let the situation go, let it get too far. At the time, though, he'd been blind to what was really happening. Whether his blindness had been willful or not was a question that still kept him up nights.

He'd worried about Mara, kept a close eye on her when she'd let him. She lashed out at him once or twice, never very convincingly, so he kept close. She pretended to be displeased about it, but wasn't really fooling either of them. She was frightened, and, if he was honest with himself, so was he. It wasn't a situation he'd been in very often, and he found he didn't particularly like it.

Her room was next to his – the main bedroom, with a little room for bathing and dressing attached, one of the few nods he'd ever given to the fact that she was one of the only women in his employ. It had been a chivalrous gesture, and entirely lost on her. They'd usually set their sleeping arrangements up with her next to him, in close proximity, to make sure that she was close at hand if he needed her. Again, whether that had been intentional on his part for other reasons was still up for debate. That night he stopped at her door, debating whether he should check up on her or not. He knocked once, then again. There was no answer, but the door was unlocked so he went in.

The lights were off, and Mara was nowhere to be seen.

"Mara?" he called into the darkness.

The tiny light in the bathroom was on, though. He crossed the room and eased the door open carefully. The floor was slick and shining with water and broken glass. They'd rigged up water to an old-fashioned shower unit in there, the door of which had burst outward, scattering shards of heavy glass on the wood floor. Water dripped down the walls and the mirrors were still fogged with steam.

He reached for his blaster.

"Mara?" he said again. There wasn't any blood, at least none that he could see – but if she was in here, and able to hear him, she ought to have answered by now. "Mara?" Then he heard it, a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He followed the sound, noticing, as his eye adjusted to the dim, that there was a wet trail across the floor from the bathroom to the bed.

"Mara?"

She was on the floor, huddled down, with her back against the mattress.

"Karrde?" she said, looking right through him. Goosebumps pricked the skin on the back of his neck as he knelt down beside her. She was soaking wet, half-dressed and shivering violently. Even the air around her had gone cold. When he leaned in to take her pulse, she flinched away and he noticed that her lips were blue.

"What happened here? Did someone get in?"

She looked at him for almost a full thirty seconds before she responded. "No. Nothing like-" She swallowed. "Just an accident."

He didn't believe that for an instant, but wasn't about to say so. As long as no bounty hunters or Imperial assassins had found them, he wasn't going to pry. At least, he wasn't going to pry much.

"I told you I can't control it," she said, her voice sounding a little steadier, a little bit defiant. "I warned you."

"Is that what happened?" He sat back on his heels and looked down at the top of her head. "Do things like that happen often?"

"Not really."

"You've still never told me where-" he began, but she cut him off.

"I won't, not even if you order me to. Are you going to do that?"

He shook his head. "You ought to know better, Mara."

"I suppose." She paused, tugging slightly on her wet hair. "Nothing's been right since..."

"You still think I shouldn't have let him go?"

Something dark crossed her face, but she held her tongue. "It was hardly your choice anyway. But now... It's all started over again. It's his fault."

"Is it?" Karrde prompted gently.

"I see his face in my dreams. I can't make it go away. I know how but I can't-" She stopped, something changing in her expression, shutting down abruptly, like maybe, even in this state, she realized she'd said too much.

"It's all right, Mara," he said, lamely.

"It will be," she murmured. "It's not, but it will be."

"What should we do about your shower?" he asked, trying to change the subject.

"Take it out of my paycheck," she said, looking up at him, watching him just a half-second too long.

He swallowed, looking away, and said, "We'll have to have it fixed." He paused. "I think we ought to have you checked out, just to be sure."

Instead, she reached up and put a hand to his cheek. "I think maybe you ought to stay here."

He was attracted to her, had been since she'd dropped into his life on Varonat. He couldn't deny it, he'd never pretended to, and he knew she knew it. But he'd decided, almost from the first, that he'd never act on it – and he had thought she knew that too.

Then again, it wouldn't be the first time he'd miscalculated when it came to Mara.

He reached up slowly and moved her hand. "I think you might be in shock. Did any of the glass cut you?"

"No." She touched him again. "What makes you think I'm in shock?" She got unsteadily to her knees and leaned toward him. "Is it this?"

He recognized the expression on her face: desperation, mingled with raw need.

"I'm not sure," he said coolly, "exactly what you're running from, but I can promise you that I'd be a poor substitute."

She laughed sharply. "If you only knew."

"You could tell me."

"I'm not exactly in the mood to talk. Or hadn't you noticed?"

"I know what you're doing, Mara. It won't work." He stood up, pulling her to her feet.

"Won't it?" She took him by the arms, pulled him close. "Somehow I think you're wrong." She leaned in and pressed her lips against his collarbone.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, a little too roughly – he could feel her bones move under his hands when he pushed her away. She gave a little cry of pain, and his breath caught. He could hear his own heart thudding against his chest, blood rushing in his ears. Things were getting rapidly out of control.

Mara steadied herself against the end of the bed, regaining her balance, and smiled up at the expression on his face. "And here I never would have thought you were the type. There's a little kink under all that self-control. Or maybe..." She reached out a hand and pressed her long fingers against the vein pulsing in his neck. "Maybe the control is the kink."

"I don't like this game, Mara," he heard himself say. "You may wish you hadn't played it."

"Oh, are you going to make me sorry?"

"If I do, I can guarantee you won't like it." He pulled away from her.

"But you want to." She was still trembling slightly, even though the color was back in her face. "You want to, don't you?"

He didn't answer her.

"Have you noticed, Karrde," she said conversationally, "that I'm the one person you can't lie to, except maybe yourself?" She reached for him again, but he slapped her hands away. Hard. She laughed. "I wonder why that is? Don't you?"

"No."

"Maybe you don't," she said, and kissed him, tangling her hands in his hair.

He grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands away, and kissed her back. There were slivers of glass in her hair when he reached for her, and they pricked at his fingers, drawing blood. He pushed her onto the bare mattress underneath him, and she began to unfasten his shirt. He grabbed at her hips, hard enough to leave marks. "Tell me," he said, pinning her there but making no other move to touch her. "Tell me what you're so afraid of."

"What about you?" she said, her eyes dark, the pupils blown wide. "I think you're afraid of losing. I think you're afraid of feeling anything."

"Is that what you're afraid of?"

"Maybe I'm just afraid."

"I won't help you run, Mara," he said, knowing as he did that it wasn't true.

She slid her hands down to his hips, tugging at the waistband of his trousers. "Stay or go," she said, closing her eyes, "but I'm through talking."

He stayed.

Nearly two years had passed and he could still remember little details clearly: her breath, in fits and starts and catches, close to his ear; her hands on the small of his back. He tried not to think about it too much, though. He already had enough ghosts in his head.

She slept afterward, more quietly and deeply than he suspected she'd slept in weeks. He stayed just long enough to make sure she wasn't having any more nightmares. He wished now that he'd stayed with her. It might not have made any difference in what ultimately happened – but, then again, it might have.

* * *

"We've got possible contacts, Aves."

"Imperials?" They were maybe thirty seconds away from hitting atmo at their final checkpoint, the _Dawn Beat_ minutes behind them and two more of Karrde's freighters already waiting on the ground below.

"You know it," Nadal said. "Want me to scrub the approach?"

"Nah, that would just attract attention to us. Let's just hope they're fishing, and not actually expecting us."

Nadal gave Aves a look that spoke volumes to how likely he considered that, but he did as he was told.

Zillah was standing behind them both, arms crossed, watching the planet drift closer. "What flavor of Imperials? Local patrols or one of the big capital ships?"

"Looks local to me," Aves said, getting up to stand beside her and examining one of the displays. "That doesn't mean there isn't a capital ship or two waiting elsewhere in the system in case this party heats up." He said it easily, the voice, apparently, of long experience. "That would be pretty standard – especially if they're expecting us."

"Billey didn't warn me that this was like a regular thing with you people," she said lightly, trying not to let Aves know how rattled she really was. She'd been in tight spots over the years, but had mostly managed to avoid direct entanglements with the Empire. The thought of trying to outrun – or, even worse, fight – one of those giant Star Destroyers was making her extremely nervous.

"Hey," he said, letting a hand drop to the small of her back, where none of the others could see. "Remind me sometime to tell you about outrunning the Imperial flagship and a pair of Interdictors off Myrkr."

"Oh, yeah?" she said, feeling a little steadier. "That sounds like another tall tale to me."

"Well, if you don't like that story, there's always the time we took out not one, but two Star Destroyers with only a single squad of fighters and a couple ancient Dreadnaughts as back-up..."

"So, what you're trying to tell me is that this _does _happen to you all the time..."

He smiled at her. "What I'm trying to tell you is, we've got this."

"I don't think they're actively looking for us," Nadal said. "They just cruised right on by."

"Or they're waiting to get us all on the ground and keep us there..." Zillah said so that only Aves could hear.

"That's what I would do," he murmured back. "But once we're on the ground, maybe Karrde will have a brilliant plan."

"Assuming he's there..."

"Assuming he is." Aves frowned, tension around his eyes. "I really hope he is."

He was.

He looked tired, maybe even a little resigned to his fate, but otherwise unscathed. He crossed the distance between them, reaching a hand out to Aves and taking the younger man by the shoulder. "You're late," he said, but with affection.

"Boss," Aves replied, sounding incredibly relieved. "Am I glad to see you..."

Karrde's expression actually softened a bit for the first time Zillah could recall. "I'm glad to see you, too. I take it you had some trouble getting here?"

"Plenty, but you probably expected that." He paused. "There are some pretty heavy Imperial patrols around the planet. I guess you already know that, but..."

"I do," Karrde said. "They haven't shown any indication they know who we are, though."

"Well, that's something, anyway. How are we doing so far?"

"We lost the _Fallow_ near Corellia, but otherwise we're pretty much intact. You're the last ones here."

Aves looked caught between dismay and relief that the losses had been so small. He settled for saying, "What the hell happened to you?"

"That is a fairly long story, and one I think better told once we're at our destination."

"Great," Zillah said. "Let's move my stuff over then." Off Karrde's questioning look, she said, "I'm coming with you on the _Wild Karrde_ – unless you'd prefer to give me command of the _Aude Rey_, and Aves can come with you."

"Those are my choices, are they?" Karrde said, obscurely amused.

"She's right, boss," Aves said. "One of us should have been with you before. It was bad strategy to have both of us on one ship, and you on another."

"Hmm," was all he said in reply, but he didn't put up a fight as Aves heaved Zillah's bag through the _Wild Karrde_'s main entrance.

"Call me," Aves said to her, "if you need me for anything." Karrde gave them an odd, searching look but didn't say anything.

The trip was a short one, to yet another planet with a name that sounded like something stuck in your throat. "You know," she observed, sitting in Karrde's office aboard the _Wild Karrde_, "for a guy who likes meaningful names as much as you do, your choices of planets are pretty obscure."

"It wasn't always like this," he said, looking at her like he'd never really bothered to notice her before. It was the first time they'd been alone together since Billey had left her with him.

"What was it like before?" she asked, but he ignored her and lapsed into silence. After a moment, she said, "I'm impressed that you were able to move a group this big under the radar... but there were easier ways to do it, you know."

That got a reaction. "You disapprove?"

"No, just observing," she said. "Most people's instinct would be to split up..."

"We stay together. We always have. It's our best bet for survival."

"What you mean is, the group survives or no one does. You're not willing to sacrifice individuals."

He shifted in his seat. "Do you always just throw those sorts of observations out there into conversation, or am I a special case?" Clearly, he thought this was getting a little too close to home. That was interesting.

"My understanding was that you're a man who appreciates directness, and information. Is that not the case?"

"Look here, Maddoc. Let's get a few things straight..."

"Just 'Zillah' would be fine," she put in mildly. He ignored her.

"Let's get this straight," he continued. "You're here because that's the way Billey wanted things, but I don't need a babysitter or a therapist – and I certainly don't need another second-in-command. You do what Aves tells you to do, you do what _I_ tell you to do, and hopefully the next few months will go smoothly and quickly."

He turned his attention back to something on his display, and that, apparently, was that.

* * *

"This is living, right?" Aves said with a grin.

"This place is a dump," Zillah replied, falling into step beside him, "but I've seen worse."

"Have you?" he asked, looking up at the blocks of shabby apartments lining the avenue on either side of them, a clear invitation for her to share. She just shrugged, and he reached over and took her bag from her, slinging it over his own shoulder. "Karrde occasionally enjoys hiding in plain sight," he said instead.

"He does like to make things hard on himself, doesn't he?"

"And on you?"

She frowned. "He's not my biggest fan, so far."

"Long trip here?"

"I've seen _walls_ more talkative..."

Aves shook his head, but he was smiling. Then, "Here we are..."

They'd reached the end of the block and a building that was in slightly better repair than the rest of the neighborhood. There wasn't any obvious security, but just because they couldn't see it that definitely didn't mean it wasn't there. Someone must have been watching them approach, because the main door unlocked itself for them as Aves reached for it.

Inside, the building was dimly lit, but clean – certainly not the best place she'd ever seen, but not the worst either. An almost eerie silence hung over the place, though. Zillah's experience of neighborhoods like this one suggested that there should be noise – children playing, mothers calling to each other from their open windows. This time of day, there should have been cooking smells, everyday household sounds.

"Are we the only ones here?" she asked, frowning at the apparently empty units.

"I think Karrde owns the whole building..."

"A slum lord, too?" she said sharply. "How charming."

"Hey," Aves said, "that's not fair. This place is in a lot better shape than the rest of this town."

"That's true," she admitted. She needed to get her frustration with Karrde under control. This was not about her feelings, despite the fact that Karrde seemed hell-bent on making everything about _his_.

"Hey!" Aves said, poking his head through one of the doors and greeting the man inside. "Good to see you."

"Aves!" It was Dankin. "We wondered when you were finally going to show up."

"We didn't want to attract too much attention to ourselves, so we waited a while at the drop..." He walked inside the apartment, motioning Zillah to follow him. "How are things going here?"

Dankin gave him a significant look, closing the door. "Man, am I glad to see you," he said, speaking quietly. "The boss has got this crazy idea in his head, and you're probably the only one who can talk him out of it..." He glanced at Zillah, as though suddenly aware that he was talking out of turn.

"It's all right," Aves said. "You can say what you need to say in front of her."

Just like that, Dankin apparently decided she was all right and gave them a complete run-down of everything that had happened. Billey had been right about the level of influence Aves had, about how much these people trusted him. She was glad he trusted her so far; otherwise this whole situation would be even more difficult.

"So," Dankin said, wrapping up, "Karrde wants to go grab Mazzic off that ISD. He's shut me down every time I tried to talk him out of it."

"Of course he does," Aves said. "Damn it."

"Like I said," Zillah sighed, "he does seem to like to make things hard for himself."

"Hard, nothing," Dankin said. "He's gonna get himself killed this time, if we're not careful."

"Where is he?"

"Ghent's got a makeshift command center set up upstairs. Karrde headed up there as soon as he got here." Dankin open the door and gestured toward a suspiciously ancient-looking lift.

"Will that thing hold all three of us?" Aves asked, apparently thinking the same thing.

"This place is in better shape than it looks," Dankin said and hit the call panel.

The infrastructure of the place was, in fact, in a lot better condition than Zillah had initially assumed, particularly on the upper floors where Karrde had set up offices – away from any casual prying eyes.

"You know I don't mind a fight," Dankin said, pausing before he hit the release on a particular door. "I'm just not looking to watch the boss commit suicide by stormtrooper – especially not for someone like Mazzic."

"I hear you," Aves said softly, and the door slid open to reveal Karrde himself, surrounded by a bank of sophisticated – if slightly outmoded – computers.

"I take it Dankin was giving you the highlights?" Karrde asked, and Dankin beat a hasty retreat.

"Pretty much." Aves let Zillah walk in first, before following and shutting the door behind them. "So Mazzic pulled you out of the fire and got himself nabbed while he was at it. Is that about the size of it?"

"Just about," Karrde said. "I'm sure Dankin has already filled you in but... I owe Mazzic." He shrugged. "So we're going to go get him."

"Seriously, boss?"

Zillah raised an eyebrow. "We just expended an awful lot of energy trying to get away from the Empire, and now we're going to fling ourselves straight into their path again?"

"I'm not going to leave Mazzic and his people there, if I can help it."

"With all due respect," Aves said, in a tone that left zero question how much respect he thought they owed Mazzic, "Mazzic and the rest of his crew haven't exactly been our best buddies lately..."

"He was there to do me a favor, an unsolicited one at that. He was doing the right thing, we owe him our help."

"An unsolicited favor? And you didn't think that was suspicious? This whole thing could be a trap."

"It could," Karrde said mildly, "but I doubt it. It's not really Thrawn's style to repeat himself."

"Repeat himself?" Zillah echoed. "So this has happened before?"

"A couple times – variations on a theme," Aves said, and that wasn't reassuring at all.

"This is not another Mara situation," Karrde said, still not nearly concerned enough about the potential for disaster this represented.

Aves's face, though, changed noticeably at the mention of that name. "Boss, I think we both know that you're not always..." He paused, looking helplessly at Zillah while he struggled for the right words. She certainly wasn't in any position to rescue him. "You're not always at your best when it comes to Mara... or to Thrawn, for that matter."

"This isn't up for discussion," Karrde said. Then, with a dark look at Zillah even though she hadn't said anything, "I'm not planning to make this decision via committee. I have Ghent pulling what he can on that ISD's expected destination." Ghent was, in fact, seated at Karrde's terminal, so focused on the job at hand that he didn't appear to even register their presence. "Once that's done I expect us to be ready to move," he said and walked out.

"Well," Zillah said, once he'd left, "that was something."

"This is not good," Aves said, running a nervous hand through his hair. "From the outside, this still looks decidedly not-good, right?"

"I think he's got a glitch in his operating system-" Ghent, who she thought hadn't been listening, chuckled at that, so she lowered her voice a little. "What's really going on here? You'd know better than I would."

"He wants to stick it to Thrawn – like really, really wants to – and the opportunity hasn't afforded itself very often lately. Plus, if Mazzic really was doing him a solid... Well, Karrde has weird ideas about obligations and codes of conduct..."

"So do you," she said. "So does Billey, when it comes right down to it, so apparently you both learned at the feet of the master." She frowned deeply. This didn't bode well at all.

"Zill..." Aves put a hand on her shoulder. "If you want out, it's okay. Billey didn't sign up for this, and neither did you."

"Are you kidding me? This is _exactly_ what Billey signed up for. We'll just have to make the best of it – and try not to get killed while we're at it."

* * *

"What Aves is too nice to tell you is that this is a terrible idea." Maddoc looked up from the map display in their makeshift command center, regarding Karrde coolly.

"But you're not?"

"I'm not here to do nice," she said, meeting his eye. "I'm here to get results."

"Well," Karrde said, with something almost approaching humor. She was made of tougher stuff than she appeared; he had to give Billey that, at least. "That's duly noted, but I've already told you that this isn't up for discussion."

"Fine," she said, not appearing particularly intimidated. "I just want one of us to be on record – in case this blows up in our faces – that the sole reason we're doing this is because you are one stubborn SOB."

Aves flicked a glance in her direction, but her attention was wholly fixed on Karrde.

He met her gaze for a long moment, then directed their attention back to the map. "We're not talking about the Imperial flagship, or even a large sector fleet. This is a regional battle group, assigned to systems mostly comprised of rural and industrial planets. The people we're dealing with on this aren't the Empire's best and brightest, which…" He paused for effect. "Which gives us options."

"You're just planning to brazen your way in," Maddoc said, getting it before Aves did. "You're crazy."

"It's the one thing they won't expect," he replied, brushing away her objections, brushing away his own doubt.

"They won't expect it," Aves said, "because it's _insane._"

"It will also work, if we play it right."

"Boss, I can't bluff my way past the command crew of an Imperial ship..."

"Not you," Karrde said. "Me."

"You're going to go yourself? They'll recognize you," Aves warned. "It'll all be over in about thirty seconds."

"It worked before..."

"You had a Jedi with you," Aves said, and Maddoc raised an eyebrow in surprise. "That's an advantage we definitely don't have this time around."

"Another story you'll have to tell me later," she murmured, looking sidelong at Aves. Then, to Karrde, "He's right. You'll never blend in. You need a haircut, for one thing."

"Then I guess we have work to do, don't we?" He turned to Aves. "We need a ship and uniforms. I know you can get them pretty quickly. Call Jenka. He always has a supply of goods that fell off the back of some Imperial transport somewhere... Ghent is already working on all the proper codes and IDs."

"How exactly is he doing that?" Maddoc asked. "I know he's talented, but no one is _that_ talented."

"Mara," Aves said, looking at Karrde shrewdly. "Mara cut us a backdoor, didn't she?"

"One I hoped I'd never have to use, but yes..."

"Let's hope you're not wasting it on Mazzic." He folded his arms across his chest. "This better be worth it to you, Karrde."

"We'll see. Get going on those supplies." He turned to Maddoc. "I don't suppose you have a razor handy?"

"Because I'm the girl?" she asked, looking amused. "I think I might. Follow me."

Within a few minutes she had him sitting on the edge of the basin in the cramped washroom. She handed him a complicated-looking shaving unit. "You know how to use one of these?"

"I think I can manage," he said, trying to figure out how to switch the thing on. She gave his longish hair and beard an appraising look.

"Let me," she said, taking it from him. "You don't have to do this, you know," she continued, as locks of his hair began to fall to the floor around them. "Aves and I can handle it."

"Have you ever even seen the inside of a Star Destroyer?"

"No, but I've gotten in and out of plenty of prisons in my day. Ask Billey sometime about what happen to Dravis on-"

"Be that as it may," he interrupted, "an Imperial capital ship is something else altogether."

"I'm well aware," she said coolly. "But I'm not at the top of the Empire's to-detain list – you are."

"As I've said, this isn't up for discussion. My mind is made up, and I'm going."

"Fine," she replied shortly, handing the razor back to him. "The beard is going to have to go too, then."

When he'd finished, she looked at him with amusement again. He hadn't seen her smile very often, and even then it had mostly been directed at Aves. "Come on," she said. "Let's go see if you pass muster."

Aves was waiting for them in the command room, arms crossed, frowning at something he saw on Ghent's screen.

"What do you think?" Maddoc said from behind Karrde. "Will he pass for an officer?"

Aves blinked, looking at Karrde in shock. "I've known you for ten years and even I barely recognize you."

Ghent, though, didn't even seem to notice. "Hey, boss? I managed to cut you an ID that's going to match the shuttle that Aves is having some friends of ours, uh, liberate from the dry dock at Charis. The tricky part, though, is going to be making sure those orders 'from' the _Chimaera_ don't get there too long before you do. If the captain has the chance to send a message back to confirm receipt, we could be in a world of hurt..."

Aves was still staring at Karrde. He went to lean against the far wall next to Maddoc, as if to gain a better vantage point. "I know we've got more pressing matters to deal with, but I really can't get over it... You look like a _real_ captain."

"As opposed to?"

"You know what I mean." Aves grinned at him.

Karrde shook his head and turned back to Ghent and the matter at hand.

"What about me, huh?" he heard Aves say softly to Maddoc. "Don't I get a haircut?"

She laughed at him and said, "You look surprisingly respectable. Get rid of that five o'clock shadow and you'll fit right in."

"Karrde always seems to get to have all the fun."

"He _is_ the boss."

"I'm Aves's boss, at any rate," Karrde said, and they both looked up abruptly, as though surprised that he'd been listening. "How about you quit messing around and give me an update on those supplies I asked for?"

Aves made a weird face at him, like he was trying to figure out why this bugged Karrde so much, but just said, "Jenka had most of what we need." He looked at Maddoc. "I couldn't get my hands on any female officers' uniforms, though, and there aren't too many women in the enlisted corps..."

"It doesn't matter," Karrde said. "She's staying here."

Aves blinked in surprise. "Any particular reason?"

"Someone needs to stay behind and run things while we're gone." Karrde gave her a pointed look. "You keep saying you want me to use you the way Billey intended. Here's your chance."

"By leaving me behind to babysit while you go off and poke Grand Admiral Thrawn in the eye?" She returned the look, meeting his gaze evenly.

"Boss-" Aves began.

"She stays here," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. A look passed between Aves and Maddoc, communicating a hell of a lot non-verbally for two people who'd known each other less than a month. Perhaps sticking them together on the same ship for so long had been a miscalculation.

"Fine," she said, after a moment. "Like Aves says, there are few enough women in the fleet that it would probably be risky anyway."

"Or," Karrde said coolly, "you could just follow orders because I said so."

"Boss-" Aves began again, another glance passing between the two of them. There was definitely going to be trouble there, but addressing it would have to wait until later.

"I plan to," she replied, "but that doesn't mean I'm not going to give you my opinion – asked for or not. Billey calls it 'committing with disagreement.'"

_Of course he did_. Billey really had missed his calling as a political type – or, more likely, some sort of corporate robber baron.

Maddoc continued, "I've let you know my objections and now I'm done. I'll follow your lead, because you _are_ the boss." She paused. "You're out of your mind, but you're the boss."

"Well, that's something, at any rate," he said. "Get moving, both of you."

Aves gave her a meaningful look as he turned to go, and she followed him into the next room. They closed the door behind them, but Karrde found that if he leaned close enough he could hear them through the thin walls. Curiosity being his default setting, he decided to eavesdrop.

"Hey, I think this is better," Aves was saying, his voice low, sounding worried. "This whole idea is pretty dangerous, so I think this is the right way to play it."

"Maybe," she replied. "It's not that I'm in any particular hurry to find myself on the wrong end of a Star Destroyer..." There was a long moment of silence. "But I'm worried that you're not going to be able to rein him in all by yourself."

"I can handle myself..."

"You like him too much," she said quietly. "You have too much history. He's more than a boss or a friend – he's family. I know the feeling, but it can be a liability."

"So if this were Billey...?"

"I'd be in the same boat." She sighed. "Billey would never do this, though. Honestly, I can't believe Karrde is doing it. It's completely out of line with what I expected from him."

"Which was?"

"My impression of his reputation was that he considered himself above all this," he heard her say. "That he preferred to stay in the background, that he thought of himself as kind of a gentleman thief."

"He does... He used to, anyway," Aves replied. "Lately, though, it's like he's got a deathwish."

"Does he? Dankin certainly seemed to think that might be the case..."

There was a very pregnant pause, and finally Aves said, "I don't really know anymore."

"If he is looking to get himself killed – or even if he just doesn't care very much whether or not he lives – that changes the situation pretty dramatically. I don't think you should send people with him to be cannon fodder – I don't think you should do that yourself, either."

"He's the boss," Aves said, sounding conflicted. "My job is to help him do what he needs to do."

"That might be your job, but it's not mine. My job is to keep him breathing, and to minimize the damage, if at all possible."

"For Billey."

"And for Karrde, and for you." There was a pause while they did that non-verbal thing again. Karrde couldn't see their faces, though. "I know you'd rather not talk about her, but don't you think I ought to know how this girl of Karrde's was able to build him a back door into the Empire's secure computer systems?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you..."

"Try me."

"I-" Aves appeared to fight a brief battle of conscience. "I can't. If Karrde wants you to know he'll tell you."

"Great. That'll happen – about two weeks from never."

"You're not going to call Billey, are you?"

"That's not my job, either," she said. "Billey expects me to be able to handle things like this on my own."

"Okay, good. Thank you."

"Hey," she said. "Be careful on this one, okay? It would be a waste if you got yourself killed over a guy like Mazzic."

"I'll do my best," he replied, and then was gone.

Maddoc came back in, barely noting Karrde's presence until he said, "Well, at least I don't have to worry about you running to dear old dad to tell on me…"

She looked up sharply. "Taken to listening at doors, have we?"

"I deal in information. It's an occupational hazard."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, my grandmother always said that eavesdroppers seldom hear anything they like..."

"On the contrary, I'm usually fairly pleased with the results."

"And this time?"

"Well," he said, favoring her with a bit of a smile, "I learned a thing or two about you." He paused. "That angle you're working is risky, you know, you might want to reconsider."

"Hmm, I'll take your concern under advisement." A pause. "What angle exactly do you think I'm working? I only ask because even I haven't quite figured out the way to attack this particular problem."

"Which problem is that?"

"You, assuming you don't get yourself killed first." She slapped the door release. "Try not take Aves down with you, whatever winds up happening.

"And now we're back to the angle…" he murmured. She frowned, then turned her back on him and left.

* * *

"You'd think at least these shit-kickers would know how to make a decent drink," Janson said, frowning first down at the drink in his hand, then around the decidedly rustic tavern in central Sashasa. "It's not like there's much else to do here... Seriously, if this is what passes for the big city in this backwater, I don't think I want to see the rest of it."

"Cool it, okay?" Tycho said, catching Wedge's eye from across the table and frowning. He looked back at Janson. "We're trying not to attract too much attention to ourselves, remember?"

"Go tell that to Hobbie..."

Hobbie was, in fact, attempting to impress a group of the local ladies at the bar – much to the apparent displeasure of a group of local gentlemen behind him.

"Yeah, this is not going to end well," Tycho said, massaging the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.

"It'll be okay," Wedge said quietly. "The people here are used to having military types around. This shouldn't seem too unusual." This system was supposedly neutral territory, one of the few, dangerous spots left in the galaxy where Republic and Imperial ships were both welcome. They tended to give each other wide berth, but things occasionally flared up. On this particular occasion, in about sixty hours and counting, what was going to flare up was them – assuming Hobbie didn't get them all tossed into the drunk tank first. "On the other hand, let's just hope none of the girls at the bar are married to any of those big fellas."

Tycho glanced around the place. "I don't think they make them in any other size out here." He paused. "And as long as we're hoping for things, let's hope Solo isn't completely off his nut on this one."

At a particularly memorable briefing a few weeks back, Han had said, "I don't understand why we can't just go through Ukio to get to the sector fleet..."

"Ukio is no-fly. The government there has made it very clear that they don't intend to take a side in this fight..."

Han leaned back, looking around at the assembled officers like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "So why exactly are we agreeing to play by their bullshit rules?"

"Because they're the leading producer of foodstuffs in the galaxy and a key point along a major trade route?"

Han snorted, waving a dismissive hand. "We might need them, but they need us, too. The Empire alone can't sustain their economy – not at this stage of the game. They have to trade with us, just like we have to trade with them."

"You really want to call their bluff on that?" Pash Cracken asked from the other end of the room. "I'm not saying I disagree... It's just that no one's been willing to risk it until now."

"I'm going to stop you right there, gentlemen," Bel Iblis cut in. "No decision on that point has been made yet..."

"Garm-"

"We'll take it under advisement," Bel Iblis had said, with a significant look at Han.

For his part, Han had flung himself into the chair beside Wedge, and grumbled under his breath, "No one ever listens to me. What's the point of being a general if no one ever listens?"

Someone must have listened to him, though, because here they were – about to start some serious shit with the Imperials, smack in the middle of the system, and possibly spark a major diplomatic incident.

The official orders had come through a few days before, but Han had left Wedge a personal message, too. "Look, pal…" He always knew he was in for trouble when Han started calling him 'pal' or 'kid' or 'buddy.' "Look, I know Bel Iblis put you in a hell of a spot in Abregado-rae, but we need you to give your buddy Aves a call. Find out what we can do for him, find out what he really needs right now… We want to offer him something he'll have a hard time saying no to."

Wedge had sent back a reply, promising to do his best, but privately wasn't all that confident. He felt really guilty about Abregado. To be honest, he felt pretty guilty about a lot of stuff where Aves was concerned. It went at least part of the way toward explaining why he'd been willing to go so far out of his way for Aves over the last year or so.

As far as the rest of the reasons went… Well, he was still trying to figure that out himself.

After Bilbringi, after Azorr, they'd found themselves back on Coruscant and in the middle of one hell of a mess. Wedge hadn't really needed to go, but had volunteered to escort Aves and his ship back to Coruscant. Tycho had side-eyed him at that decision, but hadn't said anything out loud.

"I owe him one," Wedge said anyway.

Tycho just shrugged. "Whatever you say."

"I kind of want to make sure Luke and the others are okay, too," he admitted, and some of the worry lines on Tycho's face smoothed out a bit.

"Yeah, okay. That's a good idea."

They'd hit the planet maybe six hours behind the team from Wayland to find a full security team waiting for them at the landing facility.

"What's with the escort?" he'd asked the major in charge of the team.

"No idea. All I know is the order came down from way the hell above any of our pay-grades." He gave Aves and the others a look. "Rumor is your friends there are mad, bad and dangerous to know."

"Says who?"

The major shrugged and ushered Aves and his people into a room just off the Council chambers. He stopped Wedge short, though. "The general wants to see you – not them, just you. They stay here."

The general hadn't been who Wedge had expected. Instead of Bel Iblis, he found Crix Madine waiting for him in one of the soundproof conference rooms normally reserved for top-secret briefings.

"Good to see you, sir," Wedge said. It had been a long time. Madine was usually stationed out at the other end of Republic space and rarely made it to the capital.

Madine smiled. "Likewise, Commander. I hear we have you and your boys to thank for the victory at Bilbringi."

"Well, we did have some help," Wedge said pointedly, his gaze flicking back at the door.

"Yeah, I guess you did," Madine said, looking a little uncomfortable. "We can deal with that later, though. Skywalker and Solo asked me to check in with you, make sure you were all right."

"I'm fine. Are Luke and Han okay? When we didn't hear any details about their mission, I assumed the worst."

"You're not too far off," Madine replied, and shared what little he knew. He'd been part of the detail that had picked the team up after they'd limped away from Wayland, with Karrde's ship in tow.

"What can I do?" Wedge asked.

"Not much now. They're all just being debriefed. Go get cleaned up, have some dinner. Don't go too far, though, in case we do need you."

Wedge emerged from the room to find Aves waiting for him in the wide corridor. None of the others were anywhere to be seen.

"Well, this isn't going to go down as one of my better days," Aves said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"You okay?"

"They let Karrde in to talk to us for a few minutes." He shook his head. "The conversation did not make me feel any better about our situation."

"But you're free to go, I assume? They're not planning on keeping you all here?"

"They seem to have forgiven Karrde for any liberties he might have taken with Republic funds." There was something in the silence though that told Wedge he wasn't sharing everything. "What did they tell you?"

"Not much. That Luke and Han led a team in to take out that crazy old Jedi, that Karrde and some of your people were with them, that it all went to hell."

"That's about the size of it." He paused. "Mara's dead. Karrde's playing it cool, as always, but I have a sense it's only a matter of time before it all catches up with him – and when it does…" He sagged back against the wall and ran a hand through his hair. "Your friend Solo came in and suggested we all get ourselves fed, and then settle in while they hash things out. So I figured as long as I'm free to wander around, we might as well grab a bite. Come on, I'll buy. I owe you a drink."

"That's not necessary..." It felt like about a million years since Wedge had last had a decent meal, but he didn't particularly want to intrude on Aves and his people.

"Ah, I see that I wasn't being clear. I really need a drink – and it's just sad to drink by myself."

Wedge shook his head. "Well, when you put it that way, how can I say no?"

"Now you're talking."

"There's a place just across the plaza from here. It's not the sort of place I'd normally go, but…"

Not his normal style was something of an understatement. The little bar was almost the exclusive province of politicians and bureaucrats, but he'd been there many times with Han and Luke – usually trailing after Leia and her fellow Councilors or maybe the occasional diplomat – and actually found it kind of enjoyable. It was decidedly fancier than he generally liked, but they had a selection of Corellian whiskeys and ales that you'd be hard-pressed to find outside the system itself.

"Wow," Aves said. "This is nicer than the Mumbri Storve, I'll give you that."

"It's not really my speed, either, I'll admit – but it's close by, which comes in handy more often than you'd think."

"Definitely a point in its favor." Aves frowned at the Bothans at the nearest table. "Not so sure about the crowd, though."

"Can I get you something to drink, Commander?" The regular bartender was an extremely fetching blonde, another reason he liked the place. She smiled at Aves. "And you brought a new friend…"

"You'd better believe it, Hanna. We're gonna need a couple shots of Black Bottle, no ice."

"Oh, it is a bad day," she said. "Crash your fighter again?"

"Hey, that only happened the one time…"

"One time that I know about…" She grinned at Wedge. "Two shots of Black Bottle, neat, coming right up."

After she left, Aves actually smiled for the first time all day. "She's flirting with you. You must be an excellent tipper."

"And you must be feeling a little less crappy, if you're back to busting my chops…"

"The promise of a hot meal and a cold drink is helping." Aves paused. "Though if the food is as fancy as the décor…"

"Hanna knows my tastes pretty well by now," he said, and sure enough, she brought them plates of something off-the-menu and hearty along with their whiskey.

"Huh," Aves said, not sounding quite as amused as he had before. "She really does like you."

"Maybe," Wedge said, and changed the subject. "You want to talk about what happened? Are your people going to be all right?"

"I don't know exactly what happened, but I've never seen Karrde so furious. He was hiding it pretty well, at least from people who don't know him as well as I do, but Mara-" He shook his head. "Hell, I still can't believe it."

"I heard they lost half the team before they were able to get the mountain locked down," Wedge said grimly, thinking about Lando Calrissian. Wedge hadn't know much else about what had gone down at that point – not that he ever found out too much, truth be told, even in the months that followed – but he'd heard from Madine that Calrissian hadn't made it back. He'd always considered the guy a friend. Wedge signaled for another round.

Aves watched him closely for a moment. "Are _you_ okay?"

"A couple of the guys on that team were old friends. At least one of them didn't make it out..."

"Somebody you knew well?"

Wedge cracked a wry smile. "You go up against the Death Star with someone..."

"Aw, shit. I'm sorry to hear that."

Hanna brought their drinks and left immediately, sensing maybe that the conversation had gotten serious. Wedge said, "I only met Mara the one time. She seemed…"

"Like a challenge?" Aves laughed sharply. "I liked Mara..."

"But?"

"The situation was complicated... and, now that she's gone, I don't know if it will ever stop being complicated. Eventually, I think things would have run their course, but now…"

"Hey, Aves," someone said from behind them. It was Torve, looking very out of place against the background of political types. "Let's go..."

"What?"

"Our comms aren't working," he said grimly, "which is probably not an accident. Karrde sent me to get you. We've gotta get out. The Repubs..." He gave Wedge a dark look. "They cut us loose. We've got to get off-planet asap."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Aves said, looking floored.

"Maybe there's a mistake-" Wedge had begun, knowing in his gut there probably wasn't.

"No mistake. I heard it straight from your General Bel Iblis's mouth." Then, to Aves, "Karrde is, as you can probably imagine, absolutely fucking apoplectic."

"No doubt." Aves shook his head. "Nice repayment for Bilbringi. Fuck me." One of the Bothans looked up and blinked, radiating clear disapproval at the colorful language.

"You can say that again," Torve said. "We are royally screwed the second we leave the Core, but we're more immediately screwed if we don't get the hell out now." Torve, Aves had told Wedge later, had been one of the first of Karrde's people to do a runner after that. He'd been apologetic about it, but, unlike most of Karrde's other employees, Torve had been older, a family man, with a wife and a kid waiting for him on some nowhere planet on the Core-facing side of the Mid-Rim.

"Why the rush? They gonna arrest us?"

"I hope not, but..." He hesitated. "Karrde took a swing at Skywalker. Got him pretty good, too."

"Oh yeah? Some Jedi..."

"Is Luke okay?" Wedge asked, and they both gave him looks of disbelief mingled with disgust.

Torve ignored the question. "They made it pretty clear, though, that our presence isn't welcome any longer."

"Fantastic. So they're going to push us right out into Thrawn's territory, where _he_ can kill us and save them the trouble." Aves threw a handful of coins on the bar and stood up. Torve was already headed for the door.

"Hey," Wedge said, catching Aves by the shoulder. "The way they're treating you guys... This is not okay with me, you know that. If there's ever anything I can do, I'm here. Just call."

He'd made good on that promise more than a few times since then, but he still felt pretty rotten about the whole thing.

"Hey, you! Don't I know you?" Hobbie was saying to someone at the bar, bringing Wedge's attention back to Ukio and the present.

"Sorry, friend, I think there's some mistake," said a very familiar voice.

"Hey," Tycho said, recognizing the speaker as well. "Isn't that...?"

"Aves?"

Aves turned then, seeing them all for the first time. "Of all the-" He looked thunderstruck. "What are you doing here?"

"My job." Wedge paused. "Should I even ask what you're doing here?"

"Probably not." He grinned at Wedge. "I assume the same goes for you?"

"Yeah," Wedge admitted. "It's probably better if neither of us share any details."

Aves, though, crossed the distance between them, pulled out a chair and took a seat at their table. "I will say this- if you're planning some trouble for our friends on that ISD up there, your timing couldn't be better," he said softly.

"You know I can't tell you for sure why we're here," Wedge said, thinking back to the Mumbri Storve, the first time, during the run-up to Bilbringi. That was really what had started all this… whatever it was between them.

"I know, I know." The server came over, but Aves waved him away. "There's a chance, though, that we could be useful to each other – or that we could royally screw each other over, depending on when this little shindig of yours is going to go down…"

"What are you asking me to do, exactly?" Wedge asked, very aware of the look Tycho was giving him.

"I'm asking you, if you can, not to do anything other than whatever you were planning to do anyway. I'm just asking you not to do it until a very specific time. Can you do that without getting into trouble?"

Wedge hesitated. "I- Maybe. I'm not sure I can make any promises, though."

"That's certainly nothing new," Aves said, sounding weary, sitting back and looking at Wedge like this was just the latest in a long line of disappointments. "You owe me one, Wedge. Give it more than just a try, okay?"

"Okay, okay," Wedge said, with a sinking feeling. "I promise I'll try."

* * *

"Imperial Star Destroyer _Valiant_, this is Shuttle 552-69 Alpha. Do you copy?" Corvis said into the comm, as the bulk of the big ship drifted closer to them.

"Shuttle 552-69 Alpha, we copy. Transmit your identification code, please."

Corvis made a face and keyed in the code.

"Proceed on your present course." The reply came back crisply and nearly immediately, so the code must have worked.

"_Valiant_, we have orders from the _Chimaera._ We'd like to transmit those for review by your captain asap."

"Go ahead, Shuttle."

Corvis shut down the comm and pulled up their beautifully faked orders. "Here goes," he said, with a look back at Aves, who nodded.

Aves had been looking grim all day, and wasn't saying much. Karrde knew he thought this was a terrible idea, but he was a loyal enough employee – and, if Karrde was being honest with himself, a loyal enough friend – that he wasn't going to try and derail something Karrde felt this strongly about.

As they approached the _Valiant_'s hangar bay, Karrde found himself suddenly overwhelmed with memories of the last time he'd been on one of these ships. He'd known this was going to happen, had braced for it, but it didn't really make it all that much easier: the _Chimaera_, and Mara, and Skywalker – it always seemed to come back to Skywalker, somehow, when all was said and done. It always came back to the three of them, and all those things none of them had ever quite managed to say out loud, the things they'd all pretended weren't happening until it was way too late.

In that moment, though, his focus had been Mara – Mara and all those secrets and half-truths, all those hints about who she really was and how easily she'd played him. His Imperial hosts had kept him up for days, waking him every time he'd managed to doze, dangling some new piece of information about her past or the fate of his other people, giving him just enough to work on his thoughts but never a full to answer to any of his questions. It was mostly about Mara, though they'd occasionally let slip something about Aves, implying he'd been captured or killed. Thrawn, though, had figured out early on that Mara was Karrde's real weak spot. He'd slipped up on Myrkr, when he'd thought she'd been lost over the forest during that desperate chase with Skywalker, and Thrawn had appeared determined to use the knowledge to its full advantage.

When Mara and Skywalker had finally come to get him, Karrde had been nearing a breaking point, though you wouldn't have been able to tell from the outside. He hid it well. He'd been exhausted, though, raw and raging, just spoiling for a fight.

Mara had been waiting for the pair of them when they emerged from the detention area, pale and looking as though she hadn't slept in days either. She wouldn't quite meet his eye, she just said, "We need to get moving."

Skywalker looked like he wanted to say something, to fix it all somehow, but he must have read something in the silence between them that made him keep his mouth shut. Mara might not have been able to tell how close Karrde was to the edge, but Skywalker most definitely could.

"Hey," Skywalker said instead, "we're through the hard part, right? The rest of this should be relatively easy."

Of course it wasn't. They'd ended up in the access tunnels that served the turbolift system as alarms blared around them, Mara leading the way to a storage room where she thought she'd be able to access the main computer.

"Wait," Skywalker said, catching her by the arm. "I'll check it out first."

Mara looked at him sharply, as though she intended to protest, but something nonverbal passed between them and she relented. She yanked her arm out of his grasp, though, and shot a dirty look at the back of his head as he brushed past her and ducked into the storage room.

The moment they were alone, her body language changed.

"Karrde," she began softly, "I want to explain-"

"I don't need your explanations," he replied, trying to hold all his built-up frustration in check and not really succeeding. "I've finally got you figured out. Always running to daddy for help – is that it, Mara?"

She flinched, looking at him like he'd hit her. "What?"

"You went to Thrawn directly to try and work some deal, then ran straight to Skywalker for help when that fell apart. Not to Aves, or to Billey or any of our other allies. You found the two most powerful men in the mix and tried to work them both from different angles. I'd have to be blind not to see it." By implication, he'd have to be blind not to see that she was doing the same thing with him. She didn't say anything in reply, and wouldn't quite look directly at him. "I had a lot of time in there to think, to try and puzzle you out. You learned early, didn't you? Maybe from your real father, or someone close enough to make no difference... Who was he? A military man? Maybe a general? An admiral?"

"Stop it," she said finally, looking quietly desperate. "Please."

"One of the Emperor's advisers?" he said, pressing on. A horrible thought occurred to him. "The Emperor himself, maybe?"

She closed her eyes to avoid looking at him, and he knew he'd got it right.

"Damn it, Mara." He'd been a complete fool. "Me, Thrawn, now Skywalker... You're just a lost little girl, trying to fill that empty space."

"You bastard," she said, opening her eyes, looking more angry than hurt. "Like you're any different. You need to control everything, you…"

What else he was, Karrde never found out, because Skywalker chose that moment to return. He cast a questioning glance in their direction, but must have decided it wasn't the right time to pry.

"Regardless," Karrde said, not looking at either of them, "we have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment."

Not the least of which was the fact that Thrawn, with typical – and typically maddening – near-prescience, had shut down the ship's computer and effectively removed their main advantage. There'd been nothing for it but to crawl through the lift tunnels in search of somewhere they could steal a ship. The maze of tunnels banked and dropped away at dizzying angles, crisscrossing the whole ship.

"We need to go down first," Mara said. "We'll have to head down two levels, then across and back up. If the lifts are working again by then, we can switch to the service lift and just head straight in to one of the storage areas."

Karrde looked down the tunnel, trying to suppress a sudden wave of vertigo. He chanced a glance to either side: neither Mara nor Skywalker appeared fazed in the least. It made sense, he supposed. They were both trained as fighter pilots, but also had that reckless disregard for their own well-being that came from being told, from an early age, that their own lives were less important than some big ideal. Karrde had recognized it in Skywalker right off the bat, but now that he knew more about where Mara came from, he could see it in her, too.

He managed fairly well, despite the heights, though he couldn't really hide his discomfort from either of them. Skywalker, being Skywalker, knew exactly what Karrde was thinking. Mara frowned at him a couple times, too, and finally said, "Breathe. It will help."

He didn't answer her, but he did take a deep breath.

Finally, they stood below a steep ledge that was supposedly the last level they needed to scale to get to the vehicle storage levels.

"I know you don't love all this, but you ought to go first." Skywalker smiled tightly at Karrde. "I can get you up there easily. Give me your foot and then I can help you the rest of the way."

Karrde made it to the ledge, but in the grip of what felt uncomfortably like a giant invisible hand. Skywalker started to help Mara up, too, but she shook him off.

"Get off me, Skywalker," she snapped, and then wouldn't take Karrde's hand either when it was offered. Instead, she grabbed one of the supports and pulled herself up, hand over hand.

"Mara-"

"I'm fine," she bit out, and turned her back on him as she moved out of the way while Skywalker jumped easily up as well.

They made it down to the deep storage area with only a few minor incidents. Once they'd gotten there, though, the whole plan had threatened to fall apart. For one thing, Skywalker had wanted to go back for that damned ship of Solo's once he realized it was there, but had been overruled by the both of them.

"No," Mara said, giving Skywalker a look. "We're here now. Pick from what we have in front of us."

"Agreed," Karrde said, feeling immeasurably better now that they were back on relatively solid ground. "Though the pickings are a bit slim, aren't they? Heavy transport?" he suggested, indicating a squat ship with thick armor and a decent weapons array at the rear.

"Steers like shit," Mara pointed out.

"But you know how to fly one?"

"I can fly anything, remember?" she said, meeting his eye for the first time since they'd left the lift tunnels, still sounding a little defiant, but some of the anger had begun to leave her voice.

"So you've told me." He turned to Skywalker. "And from what I hear you're a decent shot…"

"So _I've_ been told," Skywalker replied, matching Karrde's dry humor. "I can't provide any references, though, since they're largely no longer with us."

"You take the guns, then. Mara and I will see if we can get this thing to lightspeed before any fighters have a chance to catch up to us. Hopefully, we won't need your legendary aim, but be ready just in case…"

They did, in fact, have a couple close shaves on their way out. They made it to hyperspace relatively unscathed, though, thanks largely to Skywalker's decidedly not exaggerated skills. Once the immediate threat had disappeared behind them, though, a very awkward silence descended in the cockpit.

"You guys okay down there?" Skywalker said over the intercom.

Mara chanced a quick glance in Karrde's direction, but didn't answer.

"We're just fine, Skywalker. Why don't you come on down from there and we can have a little chat about that matter I mentioned earlier."

"I have to admit, I'm curious..." he said, and signed off.

Mara threw another glance at Karrde, her expression unreadable, unstrapping herself from the co-pilot's chair and walking out without a word.

Skywalker looked for Mara immediately on his entrance, his eyes flicking to the chair she'd just abandoned, then seeming to focus on something Karrde couldn't see. Apparently, he found her, doing whatever Jedi thing he did, and was satisfied that she was all right for the moment.

His eyes found Karrde's then, and he said, "She didn't betray you, you know."

"You must be using some definition of 'betrayal' I'm not familiar with yet," he'd replied coolly, but then relented after a moment. "I know she didn't do it on purpose, if only because our Imperial friends tried so damned hard to make me think she did. She put us all in harm's way, though, because of things in her past she decided not to disclose."

Skywalker twitched slightly at that – he must, Karrde thought, be absolutely terrible at cards. So Skywalker knew all about it already.

"The same could be said about you," Mara said, walking back into the cockpit. From the look on her face, she'd heard the whole exchange. "Weren't you about to tell him why Thrawn really wants you so badly?"

"I was, as a matter of fact." He let a moment of dangerous silence hang between them. "I did wonder if you were going to object, though."

"It's your information, do with it as you please." She paused, her silence equally dangerous. "After all, as you keep reminding me, you're the boss."

Somehow, after everything – after lying to him for months, after handing him over to Thrawn – she still managed to make him feel like the asshole in the whole affair.

"I am the boss, and it's my call," he said, turning away from her and proceeding to give Skywalker the entire story of how he'd stumbled across the _Katana_ ships all those years ago. He could feel her glaring at the back of his head the whole time, though.

"I'll be damned," Skywalker said when Karrde had finished, sounding, for the first time since he'd met the man, like the backcountry farm kid he'd supposedly been before joining the Alliance.

"Assuming we can get your people to make the smart move on this, it will give you a distinct strategic advantage."

They'd reviewed strategy a while longer before Skywalker left, still shaking his head, to rummage through whatever supplies there were in the galley.

Mara moved to follow Skywalker out, but Karrde grabbed her briefly by the arm. "A moment, Mara," he said as the door closed.

She crossed her arms, looking half-defiant and half-guilty.

"Skywalker knows all about your past, doesn't he? I guess the only question is whether he figured it out himself or whether you told him…"

"I did tell him." Guilt began to win out on her face, tinged with regret.

"You told him – him, but not me," Karrde said, starting to lose hold of his anger himself.

"He's involved," she said, looking helpless, "and you're not."

"How, Mara? How does this involve him?"

"I'm- I'm supposed to kill him."

"Yet here we are, and he still seems to be very much alive."

"For _you_," she said. "He's alive because of you. You asked me to let him go on Myrkr, and I did. He's alive now because I needed his help to save you."

"Hmm," he said in return. "I think you actually believe that. It might even be mostly true."

It had been a hell of a long trip to Coruscant, with the three of them trying, as politely as possible, to avoid each other in a confined space. When they'd gotten back, it had taken all of Karrde's will not to take all his frustrations out on the New Republic's bumbling politicians.

"You're up, boss," Aves said, bringing him back to the present. The shuttle settled to the deck in the _Valiant_'s bay, and Karrde shook himself as though he could shake off the weight of those memories. He needed to focus on the task at hand.

There was a contingent of security officers waiting for them when they emerged, all standing at attention with parade ground precision. A lot of things could be said about Thrawn, but he ran a tight ship (or ships, as the case may have been).

"Welcome aboard, Commander-"

"Commander Sayler," Karrde said, "and thank you. This is my 2IC, Lt. Commander Halsey." He indicated Aves, who was following Imperial protocols flawlessly. Maddoc was right; he really did blend in just fine. It made Karrde wonder what might have happened to the younger man if things had been different. Once, a long time back, Aves had shared, over a particularly nice bottle of wine, that his parents had always intended him to go to the academy and into the fleet. He'd stopped short, though, of sharing what had gone wrong with that plan.

"Lt. Commander Geen, ship security," the officer in charge said by way of introduction. "Captain Conyers received the prisoner transfer orders from the Grand Admiral this morning: six prisoners for transfer to the _Chimaera,_ via the _Majestic_. We'd wondered when the Grand Admiral was going to come for them." He checked the datapad. "Everything appears to be in order on your end, so if you'll just follow me…" He took off at a fast clip and Karrde followed, trying not to think about all the millions of ways this could go wrong. He hoped sincerely that Maddoc didn't turn out to be right about anything else.

"I'm not sure what Grand Admiral Thrawn expects to get out of small-time fringe types like these, but knowing him..." Geen was saying as they walked.

"I think we've all learned not to second-guess the Grand Admiral," Karrde said easily, and the assembled officers – Karrde's men included – smiled. It was true and they all knew it, albeit for different reasons.

"I'll say."

The detention area on the _Valiant_ was nearly identical to the one on the _Chimaera_, though decidedly smaller in scale. If things really went to hell, Karrde reflected, they could always make their escape via the garbage chute, though those weren't odds he'd really like to take twice, despite the fact that Skywalker had done it.

The _Valiant_'s security team largely ceded command of the situation to Karrde and his group, though, so there wasn't too much chance they'd find themselves in a firefight. If anything, Geen and his men seemed bored, stuck out here in the Ukio system with nothing to do. Back in Sashasa, Aves had hinted broadly that that was about to change. Hopefully, Aves's Republic friends would keep their word and save whatever it was they had up their sleeve for after they'd completed the task at hand.

The door to two detention cells slid open, revealing Mazzic and his crew, packed in three to a cell.

Aves took charge of Mazzic, who whispered, just loud enough for Aves and Karrde to hear but no one else, "I don't believe it."

"Keep it quiet for now, won't you?" Aves said out of the corner of his mouth.

"That's about enough talk out of you," Karrde said. "Get some binders on him… and don't be afraid to gag him if he won't shut up."

"Huh," Geen said, making a note on his datapad, but not really paying attention to the scene in front of him. "Funny, he's said barely a word to us the whole time he's been here." He looked up and gave Karrde a grin. "Maybe the Grand Admiral's reputation precedes him."

And that was that. They loaded Mazzic and his crew into the shuttle, put the appropriate checks into the form on Geen's datapad, and they were on their way.

"You son of a bitch," Mazzic said happily to Karrde as soon as they'd cleared the _Valiant_'s bay. "You came to get us – and looking like a damned Imperial captain, no less. If Aves here hadn't been with you, I don't think I would have known-"

"Uh, boss?" Corvis said. "We're getting a message from the ISD – and we're still within tractor beam range."

"Shuttle 552-69 Alpha, we are requesting that you return to the landing bay immediately..."

"Uh-oh."

"Do you suppose they decided to confirm that order with Thrawn, after all?" Aves said, trying very hard to keep the I-told-you-so out of his voice.

"Answer them," Karrde said to Corvis, ignoring Aves for the moment. "Act like everything is fine. Curious, not suspicious. Not _panicked._"

"We read you _Valiant_," Corvis said, with just the right blend of curiosity and annoyance. "Are you picking up something our sensors aren't reading? We're doing just fine out here-"

Then, without warning, the whole scene went straight to hell. The _Valiant_'s aft turbolaser battery exploded in a shower of sparks as a wing of Republic fighters screamed down the length of the big ship.

Aves laughed and slapped Karrde, a little too roughly, on the shoulder. "That would be the little surprise I mentioned earlier," he said, "and not a moment too soon. I knew I could count on Wedge."

He reached over and fiddled with the comm, surfing through the channels, until he got, "…pick up, damn it. Aves, it's Wedge. I know you use this channel, so pick up already…"

"Wedge? I'm here. Nice fireworks out there. That your doing?"

"Gotta give Tycho the credit for that one. I'll see what I can do about upping the ante. I wouldn't stick around for the whole show, though, if I were you…"

"No need to worry about that. We're hauling ass out of here." There was a long pause. "Hey, thanks."

"No problem. You can buy me a drink the next time I see you. Usual time, usual place?"

"Sure, sure. I'll see you there."

"Friends in high places, I see," Mazzic said, once Aves had closed down the comm. "That works out nicely."

"I don't know about high places," Aves replied. "But it is nice to have some friends with extra firepower – lucky for you, too."

They cleared the _Valiant_'s tractor beam range in what had to be record time and Corvis, beads of sweat on his brow, pulled the hyperspace levers with an audible sigh of relief.

Mazzic was still looking at Aves thoughtfully as the sky outside began to change. "That your buddy from back on Azorr?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Huh."

Aves actually looked a little uncomfortable. "What?"

"Interesting that he's stuck around, is all."

"Unlike you and pretty much everyone else?" Aves said coldly.

"Hey, now…"

Karrde figured it was time to intervene. "Now's not the time, Aves." He looked to Mazzic. "Why'd the Empire go after you, anyway?"

"They thought I was you," Mazzic said. "Isn't that a kick in the ass?"

"And not the first time it's happened, either," Karrde replied, thinking about the old days.

"Too handsome for our own good." Mazzic grinned, and Aves rolled his eyes. "Once they figured out I _wasn't_ you, they tried to get me to flip on you."

"Seventy-five thousand is an awful lot of money..." Karrde said. Aves blinked at that, the look on his face very clearly showing that he was going to have a thing or two to say to Karrde about his decision not to share that information right away.

Mazzic smiled grimly. "A few more days in there and I might have considered it, honestly."

"I won't hold it against you," he replied as the stars outside the ship turned bright white and blurred into the familiar lines of hyperspace.

"Hey," Mazzic said, "do you think maybe someone can finally take these binders off?"

* * *

"Today's a good day," Han said, aiming his behind into the most comfortable chair in Bel Iblis's office, only to change trajectory at the last moment under the older man's decidedly cool gaze. "Any day that we can give Thrawn a nice big black eye is a good day," he finished, taking the second-most comfortable chair instead.

Bel Iblis watched him in silence a moment longer and, when Han did not put his feet up on the desk, said, "I take it the Ukio operation went well? I've just seen the reports start to come through."

"Wedge sent me a little personal goodwill message from the front lines. The Imperials ran for the other side of the line, tail between their legs. They were caught completely flat-footed." Han had a feeling he was mixing up his metaphors, but was in a good enough mood that he decided not to care.

"Excellent…"

"There was one small complication, though…"

"Which was?"

"Karrde and his people were in the system, running some kind of rescue op. Wedge had to tread very carefully."

"Hmm," Bel Iblis said, looking thoughtful.

"What?"

Bel Iblis sighed. "I'm beginning to fear that the soft approach isn't going to work there. We may just have to hunt Karrde down and bring him in."

Knowing Karrde as well as he did, Han couldn't imagine a way that particular scenario ended well for anyone. "There might be another way."

Bel Iblis raised an eyebrow.

"We have something I think Karrde might want – only he doesn't know we have it... and I don't know if we can actually lay our hands on it."

"My faith in your plan is beginning to flag, Solo..."

"Intelligence is sitting on it. They wouldn't let me near it before, but now we have a fairly compelling reason to ask for it."

Bel Iblis folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the desk, as casual as Han had ever seen him. "I'm listening."

"Mara-" It had been a good long while since he'd said that name aloud. He shook himself, like he could shake off the weight of those memories. "Mara left a whole box of stuff for Karrde. She wanted him to have it, but we- Well, Intelligence had other plans."

"And you think he would want it?"

"Are you kidding me? Karrde's not especially predictable, but when it comes to Mara…"

"If that's the case, why haven't you tried this move before now?"

Han shrugged. "It's a shitty thing to do, especially to someone like Karrde, somebody who used to be an ally."

"It's more than that, isn't it?" Bel Iblis said shrewdly.

"Yeah, it's more than that." He hesitated. "I have no idea what all she left. Like I said, the Intelligence guys sealed it all up and wouldn't let anyone touch it. It could easily blow up in our faces." His thoughts drifted to the _Katana_ battle and to Wayland and everything that had happened there. Yeah, it could blow up, all right – on more people than just Han himself.

Wayland had truly been a screw-up of epic proportions. Han had been on the bad end of more than a few plans in his day, but the Wayland op topped a pretty impressive list of failures, foolhardy schemes and just plain bad luck. The plan itself had been a gamble from the get-go, but a calculated one. It had seemed, at first, like the right call – dangerous, definitely not guaranteed to succeed – but their best chance to hit Thrawn right where it hurt.

That, at least, they'd been able to do. The price they'd paid, though, was the part that still kept Han up nights.

In fairness to himself, his plan had been a halfway decent one on the face of it. He simply hadn't factored in all the variables. He'd known Mara was a potential problem, an unknown quantity. He'd figured early on that if anything went wrong, it would likely be because of her. He'd been right about that; he just hadn't been right about _how_.

Han had wanted to leave her behind with the ship – preferably bound to a chair or locked in the hold. Luke wouldn't hear of it, though – and that right there should have been the first big warning sign. The girl had barely been stable on her best days, let alone on a planet surrounded by echoes of the Emperor and with a crazy old Jedi clone whispering in her ear the whole time. Luke hadn't fared much better, to be honest. Halfway to the mountain, he'd begun to look pale and haunted, had volunteered for extra guard duty at night since he wasn't sleeping much anyway.

"Are you all right?" Han asked him, in between checking sensor read-outs.

"I'm all right," Luke began. "It's just…"

"This place," Mara said, with a shudder.

Luke gave her a look that, in retrospect, Han should have known immediately for what it was. In the moment, though, he'd been focused on the task at hand.

"I know, Mara," Luke said, still watching her. "I feel it, too."

Luke's response to all the bad Jedi-fu flying around that place had been, against Han's better judgment, to start teaching Mara to improve her Jedi skills.

"You think that's such a great idea?" Han asked, frowning at Mara's silhouette, outlined sharply against the setting sun.

Luke shrugged. "It seems like the right thing to do."

"Right and smart are two different things…" Han began, but they'd been through it all before and he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere.

Luke shrugged again and went to sit beside Mara in the fading light. "Try to clear your mind of distractions…"

"It's a little crowded in here," she said, trying for dry humor and failing.

From that point on, Luke worked with her, finding an hour or two a day, sometimes right in their camp, other times – depending on the terrain – finding a little clearing or grove where they could go for quiet and a minimum of distractions. They fell into such a natural pattern that Han didn't even really notice it until it was disrupted.

They'd been maybe a day or two from the mountain when Han noticed the change. Abruptly, whatever training Luke had been doing came to an end – and whenever Mara was nearby, Luke wouldn't quite meet anyone's gaze. He watched her, though, mostly while she wasn't looking. For her part, Mara looked like she was viewing the action from a few thousand light years and possibly a couple decades away. Han had a few theories on what was going on there – in addition, of course, to the garden variety Jedi bad ju-ju – and none of them were particularly pleasant.

His suspicions were confirmed on the way into Mount Tantiss, which was rotten timing and totally par for the course. Luke and Mara were up near the intake vents, supposedly figuring out the way in. The scene Han very nearly blundered straight into, though, was something entirely different. He stopped short, just out of sight, beyond a line of trees.

"He can't make you do that," Luke was saying. He was facing Mara, very little space between them.

"Are you sure about that? Do you really know for sure? He said he saw me kneeling before him – that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for interpretation…"

He hesitated, not answering her for a long moment.

"Lie to me," she said, reaching out and taking his hand. "It's what I want. I've spent most of my life believing comfortable lies."

He gazed at her, sympathy and something else warring on his face, and for once she actually looked back at him. "Okay, all right," he said, still holding her hand. "He can't do that."

"And if you're wrong," she said, their eyes locking, "I'd rather die than let him force me. You understand?"

"He can't force you," Luke said again.

She started to protest. "Please... _Luke_, please just promise."

Something shifted in his expression when she said his name, a look that to Han meant nothing but trouble, and said, "He can't, but even if he can... Either way, I won't let it happen. No matter what, I promise." She watched him closely for a moment, then nodded. There was another long pause. "I trust you'll do the same for me?"

"Don't give me an opening, Skywalker," she said, looking away again, dropping his hand. "I might jump the gun, you know."

"You won't."

Any second they were going to tumble to the fact that Han was there, so he started back slowly the way he'd come, intending to find Lando and Chewie and head back up there with some strength in numbers.

"I might. You can't trust me. I've already proven that you can't…" There was a long moment of silence, then she said, "Don't. What happened before was a one-time deal, okay?" Han picked up the pace. He really, really wanted to know as few details about this as possible. "At least-" She faltered. "At least, until all this is over and we can figure some things out. Please?"

He couldn't quite hear Luke's response, the words indistinct, but the tone unmistakable. He didn't sound particularly happy.

The whole plan had been a complete clusterfuck and getting worse every minute.

Later, as they were making their way into the air duct system, he said quietly to Luke, "You going to be able to handle this all right?"

"I've got it under control." Luke hadn't lied to Han in a very long time, but he could still spot it easily.

"Sure, buddy. But what about your girlfriend back there?"

Luke flinched at that. "Leave it alone, Han."

"Fat chance. You two are free to make whatever bad decisions you want on your own time, but right now everything you do affects the rest of us – especially the two of you." He looked hard at Luke. "That girl is two lightyears short of a parsec, you read me? You keep a leash on her, or I will."

"Han, we've got to see this through…" Luke began, which wasn't at all the answer Han wanted.

So, a few minutes later, he fell into step beside Mara. "Hold it together, okay, kid?"

She turned to him, moving slowly, blinking as though she had to concentrate to focus on what he was saying. "It's not like I'm not trying," she replied shortly, then lapsed into silence again.

"Hey-"

"Can I ask a favor?" she said without warning.

"Yeah, what's that?"

"If I don't…" She hesitated, her expression shifting just perceptibly from sad to scared and back again. "I left some things, for Karrde, just in case. If you can, will you make sure he gets them?"

"Hey." He forced a nonchalant grin. "That's not going to be necessary."

"Maybe not, but just in case. It's important."

"Okay, okay."

"Thank you," she said sincerely, looking him in the eye, and for the first time he felt like maybe he was getting a glimpse at who she really was underneath it all.

He'd promised, but hadn't been able to make good on it. Palace Security had already swept in and grabbed all her stuff before they'd ever made it back to Coruscant, let alone before Han could give it to Karrde. Karrde was a weird guy. He'd been weird about Mara, and now he was especially weird about Luke. It wasn't all that surprising. It had been pretty obvious to Han that something had been going on all fronts there, even before things had all gone to hell. What a mess, even now.

"I think it's worth the risk," he said slowly, willing himself back to the present. "I can make the offer, set up a meet. Just me, though, with maybe Page or one of his guys for some back-up." He grinned. "No offense, but Karrde thinks you're an asshole."

"So I hear," Bel Iblis replied dryly. "What's the best case scenario here, though? I don't want to take this gamble blindly."

"The reward is obvious – it might get him to agree to sit down and talk with us."

"And the risk?"

"If it does blow up," Han said, "we might have to shut Karrde up. We might have to make a bad deal."

"I don't particularly like bargaining with my back against the wall..."

"Well, how about this? Let's take a look at what Intelligence has got first, and decide our next move from there."

* * *

"Usual time, usual place," Aves said, walking into the alley behind the Mumbri Storve cantina. "Think maybe we can actually go inside and have a drink for once?"

"I'd like that," Wedge said. He was leaning up against the wall in Aves's usual spot. "After last time, I was afraid we'd never get to share a friendly drink again."

"Well, maybe if you'd said you were sorry…"

"I _did_ say I was sorry," Wedge said, extending a hand for Aves to shake. "Plus, I saved your ass – again. How else am I supposed to make it up to you?" He pulled Aves from the handshake into a kind of brotherly embrace, and Aves just completely caved.

"Damn it, Wedge," he said, hugging him back.

"Next time I'll just let the Imperials capture you then, is that it?"

"I owe you," he said, releasing Wedge. "I do."

"Does that mean I'm forgiven for Abregado?"

Aves hesitated. "I wasn't really _mad_ about that. I was-" Hurt, a little heartbroken – a whole bunch of things that weren't entirely appropriate to feel about someone who was supposedly just a friend.

"You thought I screwed you over, I get it."

"That's one way of putting it."

Wedge grinned. "Buy you a drink?"

"Sure," Aves said, putting a hand on Wedge's shoulder and steering him toward the entrance of the cantina. "I'd really like that."

* * *

"I guess," Mazzic said conversationally, setting a bottle of whiskey on the table between them, "it goes without saying that I owe you one."

"Not at all," Karrde replied, barely looking up from the balance sheet he'd been staring at for the better part of the night. "This was simply repayment in kind. You warned me about Thrawn and put yourself at risk to do so."

They were in a sort of makeshift common area in a little inn just outside the capital of a planet three systems over from Ukio, letting the dust from the Republic's attack on the Imperial sector fleet settle down a bit before moving on to drop Mazzic's group off. Karrde had had Maddoc pull the rest of his own people out of their current base and head to a more permanent location where they'd all regroup once this task was finished.

"Sure," Mazzic said, pouring two very hearty glasses. Karrde held up a hand, though, and Mazzic knocked a couple fingers from Karrde's glass into his own. "But walking straight into an Imperial detention center to get me and my people – especially with the size of the price on your head – goes way beyond what you might have owed me for that."

"Well, just keep the gesture in mind in the future then, in case you're ever in the position to do me another favor."

"I won't forget it. That's a promise." There was an extended pause. "I'm sorry you're in the shit," he said, looking like he really meant it. "I'm sorry about your girl, too."

He clapped Karrde on the shoulder and took off, taking the bottle of whiskey with him. That was probably better. Karrde's thoughts had been dark enough these past few days, the weight of memory on him, and it had only gotten worse once they'd gotten out of Ukio. Here they had plenty of time to lay low – and plenty of time to think. His thoughts kept drifting back to the _Chimaera_, to Coruscant, to that doomed, futile race for the _Katana_ fleet.

Then they hadn't had the luxury of downtime. He'd gone straight from the landing facility on Coruscant to a meeting room lousy with Republic leaders, most of whom hadn't been too interested in hearing what he had to say – for a variety of reasons.

He'd kept Mara apart from the whole proceeding, sending her, quite literally, to her room and telling her to stay there until he told her otherwise. She'd nodded, hadn't put up a fight, most of her anger cooled by that point. Most of his had, too, truth be told. He was wary, though, not quite sure where things stood, or what she might do in front of an audience. The last thing they'd needed was for anyone in the Republic to find out what she'd been to the Emperor – make that _anyone else_ in the Republic, he'd corrected himself.

Skywalker had sat beside him in the meeting room and, reading his mood, said softly, "That was the right call. Coming back here, especially after everything that's happened, has to be tough for her. Give her a little time to calm down, to find some balance."

"I'm so glad you approve," he said, but the retort had been reflexive, without a lot of fire behind it, and it was clear Skywalker knew it.

The meeting had been just short of useless, which didn't seem to particularly surprise Skywalker or his sister, who Karrde found out later had their own plans for dealing with the situation. It had surprised Karrde, though, and that was a fairly unusual occurrence. He'd hedged his bets anyway and had sent word on to Aves to get there ahead of the Republic teams, taking the risk that one of Ghent's typically brilliant encrypts would protect the _Katana_ information from any prying eyes. He knew he should have sent Mara to hand-deliver the location, but he couldn't quite shake his renewed misgivings about trusting her – no matter what she said, no matter what Skywalker said. He couldn't shake the thought that she might simply take the information and drop off the map, out of his life, in one final and spectacular act of betrayal. He didn't necessarily believe she'd do it, but he wasn't as certain as he once would have been that she _wouldn't_, either.

Their hosts had put them in separate rooms, albeit separate rooms in with a connecting door, as though unsure quite what to make of them or exactly what their relationship was – to each other or to the Republic.

They weren't, Karrde had been forced to admit, the only ones.

He'd gone to Mara's room first, expecting to find her waiting for him, only she hadn't been there. She'd been in his room instead, sitting cross-legged on his bed, her attention focused on something beyond the wide window.

"They don't believe you," she said before he had a chance to speak.

"Some of them do." He closed the door behind him. "The rest are just playing politics. Whether or not they believe me doesn't really matter in that case."

She watched him, searching for something in his face, as he crossed the room.

"I need you to go to Aves," he said, trying to ignore her gaze. "I've got him moving every ship we have to those coordinates."

She still looked like she was trying to find something in his expression, but she nodded and moved to leave.

"I need you to go…" He caught her by the wrist. "But later." He didn't want her to have too much of a head-start on Aves or Skywalker's team, just in case his worst suspicions happened to be right. And, he had to admit, part of him wanted an explanation from her.

Her eyes flicked over his face again, and she pulled back a little. He still had hold of her wrist, though, so she couldn't go far.

"Karrde-" She tried, a little half-heartedly, to tug out of his grasp.

"I thought you wanted to talk. I thought you wanted to explain."

"And you said you didn't want to hear any explanations."

"We did have more pressing concerns at the time."

Somehow they'd drifted closer to the bed.

"I screwed up," she said. "I admit that. It was a stupid mistake, but I didn't sell you out. I need you to believe that."

This close he could feel her trembling, could hear the slight hitch in her breath. The thought occurred again that she might still be playing him. "So that's your explanation? That it was all a big mistake?"

"I took Thrawn at his word. There was a time when the word of an Imperial Grand Admiral would have meant something-"

"Oh yes, the good old days. Let's talk about those."

"What do you want to know?"

That caught him off-guard. He'd been expecting more evasions, more declarations that she wouldn't share anything about her past, that he didn't need to know.

"So any question I ask, you'll answer?"

She hesitated a little, but forced a nod.

"Why? Why now?"

"I need you to trust me again. If this is what it takes, then so be it."

He let go of her wrist. That hadn't been the answer he'd expected. "Mara-"

"You don't trust people, but you trusted me. I want you to trust me." She blinked, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Another blink, and they were gone.

If she was still playing him, she was very, _very_ good at it.

"It's not that easy," he said.

"I need-" she began, then stopped, closing her eyes.

"Then tell me. All of it, even the parts you haven't told Skywalker." There was a long moment of silence, while he waited for her to say something.

"This isn't easy for me..." She blinked again, like she was still fighting tears.

"If it was easy, I wouldn't be asking for it."

She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, it appeared she'd come to a decision. "I don't know exactly how he found me," she said, looking like she was staring at something far away. Karrde didn't have to ask who 'he' was. "I guess it doesn't matter, but I have wondered occasionally... He found me, and then he came and took me away. I was very young, so I don't really remember much."

"What about your real parents?" She just shrugged and left it to him to fill in the ugly blanks.

"He always said he chose me because I was special. Everyone else said it, too, and I believed it." She took a breath. "I guess I was special. Not as much as I imagined, but special enough."

"Special how?"

"I could hear him, from anywhere in the galaxy. I was trained to do whatever he asked of me."

"You were more than just a courier, though..."

She flinched slightly at that, which he didn't completely understand, but she said, "I thought so, whether it was true or not. He treated me like..." She swallowed hard. "He treated me like a daughter." Then, "That sounds so stupid out loud."

Karrde could only imagine how a man like Palpatine would have treated his daughter, particularly one who wasn't his by blood, but didn't say so.

"Whatever the truth actually was, whatever it still is, I think I needed to believe it to be able to do the things he asked me to do – and I did everything he ever asked." She looked him in the eye for the first time. "Are you going to ask me what he made me do?"

"No." He took her by the wrists again, gently this time, and kissed her very softly on the mouth.

"What are you doing?"

"Forgetting about all this."

She looked down. "But you said it yourself, it's not that easy."

"It's not, but just for right now, let's pretend it is."

"I'm not very good at pretending," she said, but she let him kiss her anyway, her hands still trembling a little when they came to rest on his shoulders.

She kissed him back hard then, hands dropping to his waist, pulling his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, falling into their usual patterns. It didn't feel right, though, it felt like something very fundamental had suddenly shifted between them.

"Stop," he said, gently pushing her away. "Stop. Slow down."

She pulled away even further, putting space between them and looking up at him as though she had to concentrate to figure out where he was going with this. Whatever she read there made her flinch again, must have hurt her in some mysterious way he'd never understand. That had been, he had to admit, part of the primary attraction. He'd always liked a puzzle, had never wanted to shy away from a challenge.

"Don't," she said softly, that wounded, curiously open look still on her face.

"What?"

"Don't be nice to me." She took a shaky breath. "I don't think I can take it."

"Is that why you picked me, Mara?" he said, leaning in again, close to her ear. "Because I'm not a nice guy?"

"Don't," she said again. "Just don't." There was a pause, another uneven breath. "You're not as bad as you think you are, you know."

"What am I, then?"

"I think you're like me. I think you've been believing what you're supposed to be for so long, you've forgotten how to be anything else. You've forgotten who you are down deep at the core." She kissed him, not giving him a chance to reply, to tell her she was wrong. When she let go, she said, "I picked you because I trust you. I needed to trust someone again, and you were worthy of it."

He looked at her for a long moment, then said, "I want to be nice to you, I want you to let me for once. It will be all right. You won't break, I won't let you."

"Okay, okay. I believe you, I won't break," she said, and she didn't. Not then anyway, that happened later.

* * *

The last time Han had seen Karrde in person had been kind of a disaster. It had been right after Wayland, everything still raw, all their wounds still painfully fresh. He wondered if Karrde would be pissed off that he'd picked the same spot for this meeting, or if he'd take it in the spirit in which it was intended.

Back then, Karrde had gone to Jeldwen, Billey's old (and, if rumors were to be believed, current) stomping ground, presumably to lick his wounds and figure out his next move. Han, wanting to be very sure that whatever that move was it didn't put him, his family or the Republic in the line of fire, had followed Karrde there.

He hadn't really considered Karrde the type to down his sorrows in alcohol. The guy was too controlled, too uptight, too much of a cold fish. It was something of a surprise, then, to walk into the right kind of bar that first night, looking for someone who might be able to point him in Karrde's direction, only to find the man himself – half in the bag, staring out the window, a nearly empty bottle of excellent whiskey dangling dangerously from a careless hand.

"Well, that was suspiciously easy," he'd said, helping himself to a seat at the bar and signaling for a whiskey of his own.

Karrde blinked at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Looking for you. What else?" There was an extended pause, during which Karrde swayed ominously. "Sit down before you fall down," Han said, and Karrde complied, nearly upsetting the bottle of whiskey as he did so. "I've gotta admit, this is something I would've bet I'd never see."

Karrde laughed roughly. "Not very good form, is it? To be honest, though, at the moment I'm finding it a little hard to care," he said, with what Han had to admit was remarkable poise for someone who'd drunk even half that bottle, let alone most of it. "Though it would appear you're drinking your own memorials tonight." He nodded at Han's glass.

"Maybe I am. Care to join me?"

Karrde just made a noise of disbelief. After a moment, though, he said, "I was sorry about Calrissian, and your Wookiee friend."

"He had name, you know."

"Of course, he did," Karrde said, looking contrite. "I am sorry."

"Well, I was sorry about Mara, too."

"Were you? Were any of you?"

"Hey," he said lamely, "she went out fighting, and saved a lot of lives in the process..."

"Don't give me that," Karrde said, putting his drink down. "Don't try to gloss things over just because she's gone. She wasn't some hero, and she nearly got us all killed several times over..." He paused, picking the glass up again and taking a drink. "But she was also extraordinary, and losing her this way is a damned waste."

"I didn't know the girl very well, but she was smart and good in a fight. And..." He hesitated, wary about bringing this up. "Luke thought she was something special, and that's a pretty good recommendation in my book."

"Don't talk to me about Skywalker," Karrde said succinctly, draining his glass and standing up. "The next time I see him, he'll have more than a sucker punch to worry about."

"Sit down," Han said evenly. "We're not quite through yet." Karrde complied, not looking very happy about it. "I don't know exactly what went down between you and Luke, but I'm happy to leave it between the two of you. That's not why I'm here."

"Why are you here? And don't try to tell me it's out of concern for me or my people..."

"I wouldn't insult you. I want to talk about your arrangement with the Republic."

"Don't you mean 'former' arrangement? They've made it pretty clear they no longer have any use for our services..."

"I don't agree with that, and Bel Iblis knows it, but I got overruled. I need to know, though... I need to know that you're not going to do anything to screw us over. Maybe if I can get some assurances from you, we can still offer you some protection..."

"Nothing personal, Solo," Karrde said, "but you can take your assurances and your protection and shove it up your-"

"Yeah, that's not personal at all."

That, unfortunately, had been that. Karrde paid for Han's whiskey (and his own, which must have been one hell of a bar tab) and disappeared out into the street – and off the map for a good long while. There were rumors, of course, that his organization was still running – even further underground than it had been before. There were even newer rumors that Thrawn was still looking for him, that the price on his head was so large it had become the stuff of legend.

An oddly-shaped shadow fell across the table, and Han instinctively dropped a hand to his weapon.

"He's not coming."

He looked up to find Billey there, alone. "This is unexpected..."

"He's not coming," Billey said again, "but I thought you and I might have a talk instead." There was a pointed silence. "Well, offer an old man a drink already."

Han signaled the bartender to bring another whiskey. "It's been a long time."

"That it has. Before that stunt of yours at Yavin, certainly."

"Hey, I helped saved the galaxy."

"Temporarily, anyway," Billey said dryly.

"So, Karrde isn't coming." Han cradled his glass in his hands. "He sent you instead?"

"He didn't. He's... unavailable. I got the message directly."

"You two working together again? I thought you were retired."

"Semi-retired. You know how it goes."

"That I do." How many times had he resigned his commission now? He sighed. "Where is Karrde?"

Billey laughed darkly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." That appeared to be all he was willing to share on the subject. "So, I have to admit, Solo, I'm curious."

"And that's why you showed up. You just had to _know_, huh?" Billey had always been like that, maybe that was where Karrde got it from – birds of a feather.

He shrugged. "It was an unusual enough request that it seemed worth the risk."

Han did some quick mental arithmetic on the risk/reward of trusting Billey with this. At this point, Billey was probably the closest he was going to get to Karrde himself – and it wasn't like what he had to offer was their only bargaining chip.

"I have something I think Karrde will want. I wanted to give it to him." He took a tiny silver datacard from one pocket and held it up.

"How charitable of you," Billey said, sounding suspicious. Then, "What is this?"

"A peace offering. I had to pull some strings to get it."

"But what is it?" Billey asked.

Han shook his head, handing it over. "I think it's an apology."


End file.
